


End of the World

by wheel_pen



Series: End of the World [1]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Sherlock (TV), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Alien Anthropologists, Alternate Universe, Destruction of Earth, F/M, Finn (wheel_pen), Kid Fic, M/M, Q is a Holmes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-17
Updated: 2015-07-01
Packaged: 2018-03-30 22:05:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 36,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3953482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheel_pen/pseuds/wheel_pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Planet Earth is about to be destroyed. Fortunately, Sherlock and his ever-expanding family are alien anthropologists charged with salvaging people and culture. Unfortunately, he forgot to explain all this to John. That’s a bit not good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. John gets out of the house

**Author's Note:**

> The bad words are censored; that’s just how I do things.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this AU. I own nothing and appreciate the chance to play in this universe.

John happened to be passing by the front door when the doorbell rang and he opened it, automatically preparing to welcome in whoever stood on the stoop. They’d had a lot of people arriving over the last few days… arriving, and never leaving, as far as John could tell. Which was just slightly sinister. Something was obviously going on; but he wasn’t privileged to know what it was.

He started to say, “Come in,” but stopped when he actually saw who it was. The man was tall, slim, and blond, with a confident, almost cocky grin and a rather nice bomber jacket. He was also alone and carried no luggage, unlike the usual arrivals, who came prepared as if for an overseas trip. Most importantly, there was a tingly aura about him which John recognized, even if he’d never seen this particular person before. The welcoming words died in his throat.

“Hello,” the man said cheerfully. “I’m looking for Sherlock. Is he in?”

John kept the door slightly between them as he’d been told to and glanced quickly over his shoulder, wishing Mrs. Hudson would appear and help him out. “No, sorry, he’s gone out.”

“Ah. How about Mycroft?”

John was not impressed at the name-dropping. “Yes, I think he’s around, but he’s rather busy,” he replied discouragingly.

The man’s grin broadened as if he understood John’s dilemma. “I see. Perhaps I could come in?” His accent was very posh.

“Mmm,” John hesitated. “I’m not supposed to invite people in.”

“People like _me_ ,” the man clarified, without taking offense. John acknowledged the point. “You’re very good at spotting us, for a human,” he added in a complimentary tone. “Oh, are you Sherlock’s human?”

That was how they all talked about him and it made John want to roll his eyes. “I’m John Watson,” he answered instead. “ _Doctor_ John Watson.” He _had_ achieved one or two other things in his life besides being ‘Sherlock’s human,’ though he didn’t take that accomplishment lightly.

“Of course, I’m sorry,” the man said, seemingly sincere. He held out his hand. “I’m Henry, you can call me Hal.”

John gazed down at his hand, then back up at his blazing blue eyes. “Sorry—“

“Oh right,” Hal agreed, dropping his hand quickly. He did not seem to find the situation awkward at all. “Not supposed to shake hands across a doorway. Sensible precaution, you’ve been well-taught.”

“Thanks.” Where _was_ Mrs. Hudson? Or anyone who knew more than John, which was everyone.

Hal’s expression was quite charming, slightly conspiratorial. “Perhaps I could just come in on my own,” he suggested.

“I’m not sure I can actually endorse that idea,” John told him carefully. It was all rather ridiculous, he thought, but Sherlock had been quite firm on the importance of security.

“I understand,” Hal assured him, and he stepped through the doorway into the foyer, unimpeded by any barriers.

Then Mrs. Hudson chose to appear. “Hal, dear!” she greeted, giving him a hug and a kiss. “I’m glad you finally showed up.” John supposed this meant he was alright.

“I’ve been getting things ready,” he told her affectionately. “What floor am I on?”

“Four, dear,” the housekeeper responded. John wouldn’t have said 221B Baker Street _had_ a fourth floor.

“And random children?”

“The basement.”

“Excellent.” Hal grinned with satisfaction. “I hope to have a lot of people arriving over the next few days.”

“We’ll be ready for them,” Mrs. Hudson promised.

Hal turned to John and held out his hand again. “Now we can be properly introduced!”

This time John shook it readily. “Yes, sorry about that—“

“No, don’t be,” Hal insisted, and seemed to mean it. “Safety is very important.”

“Yes. Did you want to see Mycroft?” John offered. “I think he’s upstairs.”

“Well, I’ll see upstairs,” Hal remarked with a smirk, as if seeing Mycroft wasn’t really high on his priority list. “Lead on.”

John started up the narrow stairs. “How do you know Sherlock and Mycroft?” he asked over his shoulder.

“Oh, we’re brothers.”

John stumbled over a stair and turned back to Hal with wide eyes. “Brothers?” Well, the eyes, cheekbones, physique—he supposed he could see it a bit. Hal seemed a much heartier, friendlier fellow than either Sherlock or Mycroft, though.

“Well, sort of, that’s your closest term for it,” he hedged.

John had heard that caveat before and resumed walking. “Horizontal genetic relationship?” he recalled dryly.

“That’s the one.”

“Sherlock didn’t say he had another brother,” John couldn’t help commenting—yet another thing he’d been left out of.

“Oh, well,” Hal dismissed, as if it wasn’t that important. “I’m the odd one out.”

John turned to stare at him again as they went down the hallway on the second floor. Between Sherlock and Mycroft it was hard to imagine anyone odder. Hal laughed at his expression. “Yes, I’m the _normal_ one,” he claimed, but not meanly, and John snorted a bit.

He opened the door to what he used to think of as the flat he shared with Sherlock, which had now become more of a command center for who knew what mission. Anthea and Mycroft’s other assistants buzzed about constantly, tapping furiously at smartphones, giving orders into headsets, and generally managing to make John feel in the way in what had previously been his living room and kitchen.

“Mind the cats,” he warned Hal, because there also seemed to be a dozen or more cats about, some running to and fro with an air of imperious busyness to rival Anthea, others idling in the windows looking down on the streets below. Cats were part of Sherlock and Mycroft’s master plan, evidently.

“Yes, quite efficient,” Hal commented, snagging Anthea before John could ask what he meant. “Darling, you are looking radiant,” he told the young woman warmly, kissing her cheek and holding her hands gently.

John could’ve told him it was no use trying to charm Anthea, though she did at least look a bit flustered to see him. “Hal, finally,” she tried to chide. “We’ve been calling!”

“I know—“

“How many have you brought?” she interrupted briskly, stylus poised over her smartphone screen.

“Well, none yet,” Hal was forced to admit, valiantly trying to remain buoyant in the face of her disapproval. John sympathized. “I wanted to get the lay of the land first—“

Anthea huffed and turned away. “I haven’t got time for a tour, Hal,” she told him shortly, striding over to the couch where a short-haired grey tabby perched alertly. Anthea rattled off some numbers, as if to the cat, and the creature jumped down and ran off. John had long since given up trying to understand this. “The facilities are all standard anyway,” she went on. “But we’re to have quite an influx soon so you’d better get moving.”

“Right,” Hal agreed cheerfully. “I’m off to get a batch now, actually. Eight-seven-five-one Madison Street. Furniture truck, maybe a dozen women and children within the hour.” He sounded very competent all of a sudden, which finally interested Anthea, without losing his good-time vibe. “Probably other small groups trickling in with baggage.”

“Fine. Fourth floor.”

“So I’m told.” She nodded and started to walk away again, having never even acknowledged John’s presence. He was just Sherlock’s human, after all. Hal turned to him. “How’d you like to help me out, John?” he asked casually. “Moving furniture and boxes, not fun but necessary.”

“Well, I—“

John was about to decline when Anthea sprang back over. “No, _he_ can’t leave the flat,” she denied, as if this was unthinkable.

Her tone made John bristle. “Why not?” he wanted to know.

She gave him a look, then spoke to Hal. “Sherlock doesn’t want him let out when we’re so close to the deadline.”

“Let out?” John repeated irritably. “ _I’m_ not a cat.” There were, he thought, meows of protest at this characterization. “I’d be happy to help you,” he added to Hal defiantly.

The blond man laughed merrily and slapped him on the back. “That’s the spirit, John. Come on.”

Anthea was very displeased. “Sherlock won’t like it!” she called after them.

“We’ll be fine, darling,” Hal dismissed. “Lovely to see you again, is your hair a different color? I think it is.” Anthea rolled her eyes and turned away, but there might have been the tiniest smile on her face, which thoroughly amazed John.

He followed Hal, who bounded back downstairs and turned a sharp corner down the hall to Mrs. Hudson’s kitchen. At least that’s where John _thought_ they were headed; he’d noticed lately that doors sometimes didn’t lead where he thought they ought to. “So we’re helping some people pack up to move here?” he checked with Hal.

“That’s right. I’ve been making arrangements—well, like everyone, I suppose,” Hal agreed mysteriously. He stopped in the kitchen to check a text message on his phone. “Tell Anthea I’ve got several truckloads of artwork and supplies coming in about twenty minutes,” he said, and for a moment John thought he was talking to _him_ , until there was a meow at his feet and he looked down to see a fluffy orange cat sitting there. “Thank you.” The cat scampered off.

“Odd thing,” John commented, watching it go. “These cats don’t really like to be pet.” Learned that one the hard way.

“Well, it’s not very professional, is it?” Hal allowed, which seemed to make sense to him. “Mrs. Hudson—“ The woman was right beside them, as if she’d always been there, which made John jump. Hal reached inside his jacket and pulled out a small glass vial with a screw top, placing it in her hands.

To John it appeared empty, but Mrs. Hudson seemed pleased with it. “Oh, how lovely!”

“I’ve got quite a few others coming,” Hal told her. “Still an acceptable format, isn’t it?”

“Oh, a little old-fashioned, but we can handle it,” Mrs. Hudson assured him, putting the vial safely in her apron pocket.

“Good. I’ll switch to biomech next time,” he promised, nonsensically. “Well, John, shall we?”

Carrying boxes might be the only thing John understood anymore. “Alright.” Hal opened the back door to the alley, where a black SUV stood waiting. And on the back stoop was a cat, black and white, with a mewling kitten dangling from its mouth.

“Oh, hang on, I’ve got this,” John announced. He ducked back into the kitchen and opened a lower cabinet, pulling out a wicker basket with a pillow in it. There was always only one basket in that cabinet, but it seemed to be continually replaced. He set the basket on the floor and the cat trotted in and deposited the kitten in it, clearly warning the young creature to stay put, then dashed back out the door. “We’ll have to leave the door open, I guess,” John said, looking around for Mrs. Hudson. Experience had taught him there would be more kittens forthcoming.

“Oh, we can help out,” Hal declared, scooping up the basket and stepping into the alley. “Hush, you’re alright,” he told the kitten soothingly. “Your mama’s coming right back. She’s just—over there.” He spotted the black and white cat at the end of the alley and strode down to her, John hurrying to keep up with him. A nest of crying kittens was stumbling around the cardboard box their mother had carried them to from parts unknown, and Hal set the basket down beside it so she could quickly herd them in.

“I count seven,” he said. “Are they all yours?” The cat meowed. “That’s very generous of you,” Hal praised, as though the cat had said no. “All aboard? Alright, here we go! No, stay inside.” John helped keep the energetic kittens inside the basket as Hal carried it back into the kitchen. “Where’s the animal section?” he asked John, who had to admit he didn’t know.

Fortunately Mrs. Hudson reappeared just then. “Kittens! How wonderful!” she cooed. Sure, _now_ everyone loved cats; but last year when John had suggested getting one, they’d all looked at him like he was proposing to enslave a homeless person. She took the basket from Hal and bustled off to her living room.

The mother cat seemed torn on whether to follow and meowed at Hal. “Of course they’ll be fine,” he promised, crouching down effortlessly. “Better than the alternative, right?” The cat meowed again. “End of the week.” Meow. Hal frowned thoughtfully. “Hmm. Well, of course you’re free to come sooner. Planning to round up some others? Very magnanimous. There’s this door and the front, they’ll answer any time. Sorry, I don’t really know what the setup is.”

“Sherlock said he sent out cat agents in special collars, to encourage other cats to come here,” John shared. He started this statement as deadpan, but when the cat stared at him as if listening intently, he became more straightforward, awkwardly. “Er, we also take dogs,” he added. “Birds, foxes, rats, snakes, anything really.” He’d stopped paying attention to what scampered in whenever he opened the door—wherever they went in the house, at least he’d never found one in his cereal box or underwear drawer.

The cat meowed at him questioningly. “What about animals in shelters?” Hal translated seriously.

“Delicate question,” John answered, trying for equal gravity. He _did_ listen to Sherlock’s ramblings, even if they didn’t make much sense. “We’ve adopted a lot but they were starting to get suspicious.”

“I hate to say it, but—“ The cat’s meow interrupted Hal. “Yes, out of luck,” he agreed. Then the cat turned and ran out the back door.

“Off to bring others in, is she?” John surmised.

“Yes, very community-minded,” Hal noted, finally climbing into the driver’s seat of the SUV.

John got in the passenger’s side. “A lot of people have been showing up here with cats and dogs,” he added to Hal. “Some of them mention that Mycroft told them to bring animals, like it was a requirement of entry.” He ended with a slightly questioning tone.

“Oh, that’s very clever,” Hal said with admiration as they pulled onto the street. “Good way to do it.”

It didn’t seem like he was going to say any more. “We also picked up some farm animals,” John offered leadingly. “Goats, chickens, sheep, horses, cows…” That had been a little alarming.

Hal laughed. “Good! You can always count on Sherlock and Mycroft to be thorough.”

“And,” John added hesitantly, “there were the zoo animals last week… I mean, I didn’t really _see_ them come in,” he clarified hastily, “but in the middle of the night I thought I heard an elephant.” Hal chuckled heartily; but John honestly wasn’t sure if this amused or frightened him. The complete disappearance of every animal from the London Zoo had been major news, mind-boggling and not a little bit sinister—especially as the same thing had been happening at zoos and marine parks all around the world for the last month. “I asked him if we were building an ark,” John went on dryly, “and he just gave me one of his looks and sent me off to the antique bookstore again.”

“Oh, you’ve been collecting antiques? That’s great,” Hal enthused. “I’ve been buying a lot of craft supplies and artwork, Meg loves doing that.”

John was not sure he was ready to straight-out demand what was going on—nor was he sure the answer would make rational sense. He seized on another part, though. “Who’s Meg?”

“Oh, that’s my girlfriend,” Hal answered cheerfully. “ _My_ human,” he added, with a cheeky look at John.

“Is that who we’re helping move?”

“No, actually, these are some people from a women’s shelter,” Hal corrected easily. “That’s where I work. You seem like the sensitive type,” he added suddenly. “I mean, being a doctor and all. Very trustworthy. That’s important.”

“Yes, I understand,” John agreed.

“Couldn’t bring Sherlock, he’d scare them all off, wouldn’t he?” Hal predicted with a grin.

John grinned back, imagining the scene. “That would not be very sensitive, no.” He paused a moment. “Er, so, you convinced a woman’s shelter to move to Baker Street?” he realized slowly. “Two-two-one B?” That would bring rather a change to his life, which it would’ve been nice to be consulted about. Then again, quite a lot of _other_ people seemed to be moving in, yet they mostly hadn’t gotten in his way—

Hal gave him a sideways look. “Well, the _people_ are moving in,” he replied, as if this meant something different from what John had said.

“Mmm… what?” John finally asked.

“The women and children currently living at the shelter are moving to Baker,” Hal attempted to clarify. “As well as the people who work there, as many as I could convince, anyway. And some other people I know.”

John thought about pressing for more information. But being completely ignorant of what was going on around him was becoming a state of being by now, vaguely Zen-like, and he lapsed into silence, gazing out the window and enjoying his first view of London in days. Anthea had been right, Sherlock had been asking him to stay in the flat for a while now—no reason why given, of course.

Suddenly the car started to rumble like they’d driven over a street full of potholes, or the suspension was going bad. Hal swerved into a parking lot, swearing, and the rumbling continued for a moment after they’d stopped.

“Another earthquake,” John realized with dread.

“Yeah,” Hal sighed, slumping in the driver’s seat as though suddenly exhausted.

“Sherlock is very interested in the earthquakes we’ve been having,” John went on, babbling slightly—anything to calm himself down so he didn’t start panicking over what these frequent geological oddities might bode.

“Well, of course,” Hal said, turning to him with a frown.

He acted as though this was only natural. John wouldn’t have thought so. “I guess they’re very unusual,” he commented lamely. “Earthquakes in London. Generally Sherlock prefers chemistry and biology—“

“John,” Hal interrupted with some concern, “you do know you’ll be alright, don’t you?”

John realized Hal’s hand had moved to his shoulder, not in a creepy way but rather a comforting one, and he felt a little foolish. “Oh, of course,” he agreed quickly. “It’s probably nothing, right? Just a bit weird. All the news sites make such a big deal of it—“ He’d given up checking the news, really; it was too alarmist for him these days.

Hal blinked at him, then pulled the SUV back onto the road. It seemed like there was something else he wanted to say, but he changed his mind. “Okay, when we get there, you and I will move the furniture and big boxes together,” he described. “I’ll do the lifting, you just make sure it looks heavy on your end, okay?” John nodded. “Great, this will be so much easier than with a human I have to trick.”

He turned down a mid-level residential street and parked the vehicle in front of a nondescript two-story house, whose only distinction was a moving van parked in the driveway. When Hal stepped out several children burst from the house and mobbed him, followed more slowly by their mothers, and he scooped one child up cheerfully. “This is my friend John,” he introduced broadly.

“Hello,” John said with a friendly smile.

“He’s going to help us move to our new home!” Hal explained brightly. “Did you feel the earthquake just now? You weren’t scared, were you?” Several of the children professed not to be.

John made eye contact with everyone, careful to keep things light and hang back by Hal, watching him for cues. The man tossed off a litany of names to him, which John could never hope to remember, and then it was all a blur of ‘my friend John, he’s a doctor’ with a smile of blinding charm until everyone relaxed. John had the strong suspicion they’d all just been conjured, which he’d thought was rather frowned upon—assuming he even believed Sherlock’s claims about supernatural powers, anyway.

Some people, John reflected, might not have put up with a secretive boyfriend who collected alley cats and claimed to be magical. They just didn’t know what they were missing out on, did they?

Inside the house it was controlled chaos. Teams of women and older kids worked in each room, efficiently packing dishes, books, clothes, and linens, while the younger children played in the back yard. A rotund woman with long grey hair and an earth-brown muumuu swooped around the corner and Hal greeted her warmly. “Cathy, this is my friend, John,” he told her. “He’s going to help with—oh, I just realized, he’s sort of my brother-in-law!” Hal added with a big grin. “My brother’s boyfriend.” This seemed to put Cathy at ease, which was novel to John—usually being associated with Sherlock in any way was treated as slightly toxic.

John felt a tinge of guilt thinking about Sherlock just now, even as he and Hal got to work moving dressers, couches, and mattresses out to the van (less onerous than usual, with Hal doing all the work). The mad berk had disappeared early that morning, saying he had errands to run, and mentioned off-hand that John ought to stay inside and find something useful to do, as though John was some kind of loafer who sat around watching the telly while important things happened around him.

He would gladly find something useful to do, if only someone would clue him in. Mycroft and Lestrade were out, or busy; Mrs. Hudson merely assured him he should relax and have some tea. John had been reduced to asking Anthea if he was needed to check on the people who’d been arriving, in case they had medical conditions that should be monitored, and she’d given him this _stare_ as if he was some kind of Martian. She wasn’t exactly rude—perish the thought—but it certainly made him feel utterly inadequate and ignorant. Great talent, that.

And yet he still felt guilty for leaving Baker Street. He didn’t need Sherlock’s deductive talents to realize Something Was Going On, something that worried people who didn’t usually worry about small things, like Mycroft and Sherlock. There was a very ‘bring the peasants inside the castle and drop the portcullis’ feeling about it. Sherlock might, actually, become _worried_ about John leaving the apparent safety of 221B during this perilous time.

Hadn’t sent him any texts, though.

“Okay, this next thing is quite important, John,” Hal announced, regaining his attention.

“Right, okay. What is it?” John finally asked. They were in a back bedroom, staring at several stacks of shallow boxes tucked away in a closet.

“Very important,” Hal merely repeated, sizing them up with a care he hadn’t given anything else. He lifted the lid of the top box and let John look in—it contained a grid of cardboard partitions, each little square holding a glass vial with a black screwtop cap, like Hal had given Mrs. Hudson earlier. There must have been at least two hundred fifty in the box, and maybe fifteen boxes.

“What’s in those?” John wanted to know.

Hal looked like he might finally answer, then changed his mind. He saw the peeved, yet resigned, expression on John’s face. “Sorry, mate,” he said, and seemed to mean it. “Just, if Sherlock hasn’t told you, I really don’t think I should.”

“No, I understand,” John agreed with a sigh. “Well, not really,” he corrected himself. “I mean, I understand the sentiment.”

Hal grinned, which somehow seemed to make things better. “Okay, these things are full up with magic already,” he claimed, positioning a dolly under one stack of boxes, “so I can’t use too much more to steady them. We’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way.” Carefully he turned the dolly and wheeled the boxes from the room, John walking backwards in front of him to clear the way and make sure they didn’t tip.

Then they got to the step at the front door. “How do people normally do this?” Hal wondered in bemusement, the distance down the step as large as a mountain to the fragile glass vials.

“With a rope,” said a voice behind John, and he turned suddenly to see a tall blond man standing outside the house, his hair close-cropped and his muscles prominent under his dark blue polo shirt. He did sort of have a tingly aura like Hal, but it was slightly different; and there was a dangerous vibe about him, an alertness that made John wonder for a moment if this was one of the people he had been taught all those precautions for.

But Hal grinned broadly—did he ever grin otherwise—and reached over the boxes to shake the man’s hand. “James! Glad to see you. Does that mean Q’s arrived?”

James had produced a rope from somewhere and was efficiently securing the boxes. “Yes, I dropped him at Baker,” he confirmed. “He has a lot of samples and equipment to tend to.” This was said very flatly, but followed by a slight eyebrow raise, and Hal smirked knowingly.

“Let’s get this on the van, then I’ll introduce you properly,” Hal promised. Together the three of them maneuvered the boxes out of the house, down the sidewalk, and up the ramp into the van. Well, mainly it was Hal and James, who seemed quite competent on their own. “There!” Hal pronounced, tucking the boxes tightly in a corner. “Think I’ll leave the rope on. You’ve got more? Maybe some padding…” Hal picked up some Styrofoam panels, which John would’ve sworn weren’t there a moment earlier, and packed them around the stack. Finally he seemed satisfied and turned back to the others.

“Two more sets like this,” he told James, who whistled as though impressed, though John got the sense it was rather hard to impress James. “John, this is James Bond,” Hal continued. “Dr. John Watson.”

“Hello,” John said as they shook hands.

Hal laughed suddenly before they could say anything else, then held up his phone and took a picture of the two of them. James snorted and rolled his eyes. “I’ve just realized, Sherlock and Q have the same taste in men,” Hal claimed with much amusement, texting gleefully. James and John glanced at each other assessingly. “Muscular ex-military blue-eyed blonds?” Hal spelled out for them. “Come on, even the height difference is clever when you put Q and Sherlock in.” He chuckled to himself again.

John pointedly turned away towards James. “So, you’re with… Q?” He had no idea who that was.

“Yes,” James agreed. “They’re brothers,” he added, indicating Hal.

“Oh, there’s _four_ ,” John realized, dispirited at his ignorance.

“Yes. That’s the weird one,” James deadpanned of Hal, who laughed.

“Come on, more boxes,” Hal encouraged, hopping off the truck.

John touched James’s arm to stop him, then took his hand away quickly as James obviously liked his personal space. “Are you human?” he asked in a low voice. That was the pattern with the Holmes brothers, to have a human (sometimes more than one) that they favored.

“I _was_ ,” James answered succinctly, and walked away, business-like.

Well. _That_ was something to think about.

They got the rest of Hal’s boxes of vials loaded into the moving van, which seemed to make him feel more at ease. “Okay, there’s some big boxes of books we should do next,” he planned, starting to head back to the house. His mobile and James’s chirped almost simultaneously, though, and they both paused to check the message.

“S—t,” Hal swore in frustration.

“What—“ Then John’s own phone beeped and he read the text message from Sherlock.

_Come home._

“Yours the same as mine?” he asked the others doubtfully.

“Sherlock says the deadline’s been moved up,” James informed him, as Hal seemed preoccupied. “Tomorrow, instead of the end of the week. The cats told him,” he added dryly.

John was not aware of any specific timeline. “Deadline? For what?”

“Everything,” James replied cryptically.

Hal was texting rapidly. “This is bad,” he murmured to himself. “I’m going to have to do some conjuring.” He received no objection from James or John.

_Helping Hal’s friends move_ , John texted back to Sherlock. _Done soon_.

In the midst of his worry Hal suddenly smirked. “Sherlock says, ‘Look after John,’” he relayed with amusement. “As if I wouldn’t!” John took some comfort from this, even if it was slightly infantilizing. “Well, except I really need to go,” Hal went on. “James, could you—“

“Not a problem,” James assured him. “That’s why I came.”

“Wonderful, thank you,” Hal replied. He did not seem to have the difficulty with sincerity that Sherlock and Mycroft—and Q?—had. A very easy-to-like fellow. “Okay, so you two are going to stay here and finish with the packing, yes? And make sure the van reaches Baker. Everyone knows where they’re supposed to go. I’ve got to go round up others.” He seemed genuinely concerned about the people he was tending, which John felt was a good thing.

“They won’t be nervous without you here?” John checked. Hal was the link between James and John, and the women and children who had reason to distrust men.

“They won’t even know I’m gone,” Hal promised, hurrying away. That seemed a rather poor plan to John, unusually so for Hal. He met Cathy on the lawn and took her hands, gazing into her eyes. “My dear, I’ve got some news,” he began soberly. “The deadline’s been moved up. I know, it’s terribly inconvenient,” he commiserated before she could speak. “But I need everyone to get to 221B Baker Street by _tonight_. It’s very important. Can you spread the word? I’ll pay for taxis if necessary. And I can pick people up, they just need to text me, anytime, into the night,” he emphasized.

Out of the corner of his eye John saw movement, and when he turned his head he thought he saw Hal’s black SUV driving away, even though Hal was still talking to Cathy. The man hadn’t left his keys in it, had he? Or maybe he’d loaned it to someone when John wasn’t looking. As John opened his mouth to ask, James took his arm and pulled him around the side of the van.

“It’s conjuring,” he explained shortly, in a low voice. “The real Hal just drove away. Most people probably didn’t notice that,” he added, which John recognized as both a compliment and a warning. “This Hal is like a hologram.”

“A hologram?” John repeated. That sounded very _Star Trek_.

“Mmm, sort of,” James hedged, dashing John’s hopes of really understanding something. “He’s not capable of complex interactions, but he’ll probably fool people for now.”

“Right, what about—“ The ground rocked beneath them suddenly and James grabbed John to steady him. The earthquake lasted only seconds, but it set car alarms blaring and dogs barking.

“Alright?” James checked, and John nodded, but the feeling of dread was back in his stomach. He would not deny that part of him wanted to be back at Baker Street, curled up in his bed, watching a DVD or something else comforting and safe—Sherlock, for all his prickliness, did make John feel _safe_ when they were together. Somehow.

Sirens rose in the distance. “Let’s get this done and get out of here,” James suggested, and John nodded briskly and followed him back around to the house.


	2. John learns the truth

It was more work now, because John was really carrying things; but they were mostly smaller things, and when he ‘helped’ James with something larger, he knew James was actually doing all the work, as Hal had. So: Sherlock had John, Hal had Meg, and Q had James, whom he had somehow transformed from mere humanity. And Mycroft had Greg—that much was certain, from how they acted together when they thought no one was looking—but possibly also Anthea, for the same reason, which didn’t seem to bother anyone. Figured Mycroft’s ego would require _two_. He had plenty of other assistants, too, but as far as John could tell, they really were just assistants.

With everyone except the young children and their minders helping to load the van now—fake Hal didn’t actually touch anything, but did a good job giving the impression of usefulness—the work went swiftly, the second quake having dampened spirits and focused everyone on the need to keep moving, to get packed and _go_. They cleared the house out quickly and Cathy turned the lock behind her with a definitive _click_.

“Hal, why don’t you, John, and I drive the van to Baker Street?” James suggested in front of the others. “Someone else can drive my car.” He readily handed the keys over to Cathy for distribution.

“Yes, that’s a great idea,” fake Hal enthused. “Two-two-one B Baker Street, remember, everyone? I’ll see you there.”

James got behind the wheel of the van and John took the passenger seat. Fake Hal stood at the open door and gave him a _look_ , so John scooted over and let him climb in. “I’m sure this is totally illegal,” John said to James. Hal might be fake, but he took up the same amount of room the real Hal would have, and felt solid enough squished up against John in the middle.

“He’ll be gone soon,” James assured him, and fake Hal gave him a glassy-eyed smile. As soon as they turned a corner out of sight, Hal disappeared and John moved back over and put on his seatbelt.

James seemed like a pragmatic fellow. Maybe it was time for John to seek some straight answers, since whatever was happening was evidently coming to a head. “So,” he began, “you _used_ to be human?”

“Yes.” John blinked at him, waiting, and James’s gaze slid sideways to him. “I was in the Navy,” he went on, “and then I was recruited to MI6.”

John’s eyes widened a little. “Oh. Alright.” That would explain the sense of danger and watchfulness, he supposed. He guessed James had not been assigned desk duty.

“I did a lot of things I was told would make the world a better place, if not me a better person,” James continued concisely, and John nodded his understanding. “After a while I couldn’t do it anymore and I was planning to end it all.” He swerved the van smoothly around a traffic accident on the road, the flashing lights of the police car barely distracting John from how matter-of-fact James’s admission of suicidal thoughts was. He supposed you needed a certain amount of dispassion—quite a lot, really—in James’s former profession, especially about yourself. Coming from battlefield surgeries John could understand that.

“Then what happened?” he prompted when James was silent for a block, and the other man glanced at him as though he’d forgotten he was in the middle of a story.

“Then I met Q,” James went on, “and he convinced me I could still do something good in the world. So he changed me somehow, enhanced my abilities—Sorry, I don’t have a better explanation for that part,” he added to John. “Genetic and physiological changes of some sort.”

“Oh, believe me, this is the best explanation of _anything_ I’ve had in months,” John assured him gratefully.

James’s look said he found this peculiar, but then he concluded, “And we’ve spent the last couple of years traveling around the world, collecting plant and animal samples.”

John nodded, then took the leap. “And why have you done that?” James blinked at him. “I mean, to what end? What’s this deadline coming up? Do you know?”

James gave him a couple more quick looks. “It’s the end,” he finally said.

“Of what?”

“Everything.” John sighed at the unhelpful answer and leaned back in his seat. “Sherlock didn’t tell you?”

“Rather obvious, isn’t it?” John replied, unable to hide his bitterness. “We’re packing people, animals, antiques, plants into 221B Baker Street. Sherlock’s got a dozen computers downloading everything he can from the Internet. Somehow, through his ill-defined magical powers, all these things fit into our flat. He’s got brothers I didn’t know about coming out of the woodwork. There’s this sense of urgency, and now the deadline’s been moved up, and these d—n earthquakes—“ He sighed hopelessly.

“John, the world is ending,” James stated flatly.

“Sorry?”

“Earth is unstable,” James restated.

John looked at him dully. “Politically?” he said faintly.

James nearly rolled his eyes at him. “Geologically. They’ve known for years,” he claimed. “All the earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, hurricanes—it’s all connected. The Earth is tearing itself apart.”

This was not really sinking in with John. He couldn’t let it. It would be devastating. “And—who are _they_?” he asked carefully. If he could find a hole in James’s story, that would obviously disprove the whole thing.

“Aliens,” James replied without missing a beat. “With highly advanced technology that seems like magic to us. They’re gathering up what they can of Earth—literature, art, animals and plants, people—“

“The zoo animals!” John blurted out.

“It’s a lot easier to collect animals from zoos, than to run them down in the wild,” James noted, as if speaking from experience.

John had a sudden mad vision of James racing after a wildebeest on the savanna, like a lion in his persistence and ferocity. He shook his head to clear it but found himself still in the van with the blond man, speeding through the streets of London that were riddled with debris from the clusters of earthquakes they’d experienced for months. “One of the popular theories about the zoo animals,” he finally said, his throat dry, “is that they were taken by doomsday cultists.”

James snorted as if this was absurd, then realized John was accusing him. “They’re not _cultists_ ,” he corrected briskly. “They’re _scientists_. They’re like—archaeologists doing a salvage dig, before a new Tesco is built.”

The analogy was prosaic, yet effective. “The Earth is going to—what, explode?” John checked.

“Yes.”

“Everyone on it is going to die.”

“Yes,” James agreed. “Except the people we save.”

“The people we save, at Baker Street, here in London.”

“Actually Q says they have groups all over the world,” James informed him. “And there’s even some other alien species who are here collecting things, too. We run into each other on occasion and politely ignore one another.”

John laughed at this, because he was picturing Sherlock and a six-foot-tall blue fish man reaching for the same book at an antique store, and courteously demurring to each other over it, which was utterly unbelievable because Sherlock _wasn’t_ courteous, and would snatch the book away and probably cause an international incident. Pardon, intergalactic.

“John, calm down,” James ordered, possibly not for the first time, and John tried to stifle himself. “Perhaps Sherlock didn’t tell you for a reason,” he muttered.

“Oh, he probably just forgot,” John tossed off, on the verge of getting hysterical again.

James seemed like he was going to criticize him again, then his expression softened. “It was difficult for me to accept at first,” he admitted, with some sympathy. “From my perspective I suppose it doesn’t seem like such a bad thing. Wipe the slate clean.”

John stared out the van window, his eyes zeroing in on everyone he saw, unwillingly imagining that they were going to be dead within the next couple of days. “All the people,” he repeated in a murmur, as a mother and daughter crossed the street in front of them, hand in hand.

“Villains and victims,” James summed up darkly. “That’s all I see.” His tone was on the border between matter-of-fact and jaded. “Though I understand the rest of the galaxy is much the same,” he added more conversationally.

“Oh really?” John commented faintly. “It’s not full of well-meaning but socially inept scientists preserving the remains of primitive cultures?”

James barked out a sudden laugh, which John sensed was rather rare. He was too depressed to take pride in causing it, though. “I think it will be interesting to see, anyway,” he concluded, as if this was just a holiday jaunt to another country, and not due to the end of all life on Earth.

John tried to remind himself that James had had longer to get used to the idea than he had—how long did one need? John surely had less time than was necessary.

They had pulled around to the alley behind Baker Street, only to find that the side street was full of trucks and vans waiting to get back there and unload. “Everyone’s stepped up the deliveries,” James noted. “There’ll be a crowd at the front of people trying to get in.”

“How is—how is there room for all of them?” John wanted to know. “How are we going to escape?” 221B Baker Street had stood for quite a while, but he didn’t think it could survive the fragmentation of the planet. “Are we all going to be—beamed up to a spaceship?”

“No, 221B Baker Street _is_ the spaceship,” James corrected, as they idled in line. “It’s disguised as a row house right now. Also it’s bigger on the inside than the outside, like the TARDIS.”

“Oh good.”

“Very sophisticated piece of technology, so Q says,” James went on thoughtfully. “I’ve only seen it briefly.” He gave John a sideways glance. “You’ve been living in it for a while, hadn’t you noticed anything?”

“No,” John confessed. “It’s perfectly ordinary inside. Well, of course there’s masses of people and animals going in and I don’t know what happens to them,” he added helplessly, “and sometimes the doors don’t lead where I think they should, but…” Alright, that certainly wasn’t _normal_ , but it was hardly indicative of a spaceship, was it? James made a noise that suggested _he_ would’ve investigated further.

“Well, you don’t know what it’s like, living with Sherlock,” John claimed. “Once I accepted finding eels in the bath, a severed head in the fridge, and bottles of poison on the spice rack, I just stopped asking questions. A few months ago,” he remembered, “I opened the door to my bedroom closet, and discovered it had turned into a rather fancy private bath. And I now had a walk-in closet—larger than a bedsit—on the other side of it.” He sighed. “My first thought was, no more eels in the tub!” James chuckled, but John was starting to think he’d taken a rather small view of the world up until now.

He noticed they were nearly inside the alley now. “The line’s moving fast, at least,” John commented, trying to see how many vehicles had piled up behind them. “The police will be called if we block—“ He paused. “Well, Lestrade.” There must be an advantage to having a detective inspector from Scotland Yard on your team.

“Mm-hmm,” James agreed. “I haven’t met him yet.”

“Great chap,” John assured him. “Really decent fellow. Why wouldn’t Mycroft have the government make an announcement and tell everyone to come to Baker Street or other alien ships?” he wanted to know suddenly. “Does the government even know? Is the PM going to show up? What about the Queen?”

James gave him a look. “The government should announce that the world is going to end, and everyone in Britain should try to evacuate to one row house in London?”

“I suppose that would cause suspicion,” John allowed.

“It would cause chaos,” James corrected.

“Would Baker Street get full?”

“I don’t think so,” James hedged. “I get the sense it’s quite enormous, really.” Which was funny, because John had always found it a bit cramped until recently, what with Sherlock’s tendency to clutter. “But chaos and anarchy,” he went on. “Believers all trying to get to one place, doubters looting the empty houses, conspiracy theorists and _real_ cultists having a field day in the media—“

“But more people would surely be saved,” John argued. “We could’ve started weeks ago—“

James looked as if he wasn’t sure that was a worthy goal. “According to Q, Mycroft has been organizing people for over two years, selecting families he thinks will be useful. Probably not a lot of politicians on that list,” he added with dark humor.

“Useful? For what?”

“The new human society,” James spelled out, thinking that should be obvious. “Humans will be refugees in the galaxy. But if chosen carefully, they should be able to thrive in new colonies.”

“Okay.” John’s mind was too overwhelmed at this point to continue the conversation. If you could get past the whole destruction of the Earth thing—treat it as an academic problem, say—how would you even organize an evacuation of people and goods? What sort of people and goods would you choose to save? And how would you convince the people you chose that you were serious, and not a lunatic? He had to admit it did rather sound like a challenge Mycroft would relish, probably a game he’d played for fun when he was a little alien squirt.

They were second in line now, the back door that led into Mrs. Hudson’s kitchen (usually) in plain sight. Instead of whoever had driven the truck getting out to unload it, however, the truck just sat there. Meanwhile a rush of urban animals flew and scampered through the doorway, as if fleeing a forest fire.

“We certainly won’t lack for cats,” John finally remarked dryly.

“I am told,” James began, his tone suggesting he didn’t quite believe this part, which was comforting to John, “that cats are highly intelligent alien beings commonly found throughout inhabited space.”

“Oh. Really?”

James snorted. “Personally I find dogs and horses more useful.”

“Mm-hmm. And why isn’t the truck in front of us being unloaded?” John asked, certain the other man would have an answer.

And he did. “I expect it is, but using advanced technology so as to be faster,” James proposed. “Likely the drivers are led to believe it’s going according to normal procedure.”

Indeed, after another minute of apparent non-activity, the truck drove away, and James pulled their van forward. “We’ll have to do a bit more,” he warned John, sliding from the seat.

John met him at the back of the truck, which James opened. “Why?”

“Those vials of Hal’s, for one thing,” James explained. He didn’t seem to mind doing so, which John appreciated. He started clearing a path to them by handing John small boxes, which John placed just inside the door on the counter. Whenever he returned with another load the earlier pile was gone, so the main challenge was not stepping on whatever fox, mouse, or cockroach was competing with him for the doorway.

“Why, what’s in them?” he finally got a chance to ask, as James carefully slipped one stack onto a dolly.

James looked at him. “I’ll tell you, but only once we’re done with them. Alright?” This seemed to be a sincere, rather than rhetorical, question.

John found this approach to be sensible. “Alright.”

“Call for the housekeeper,” James advised, so John stuck his head back inside.

“Mrs. Hudson!” The woman bustled out of a doorway. “We’ve got some furniture and things from Hal’s friends,” he told her. He tried not to be distracted as she nudged various animals back towards the laundry room doorway when they wandered from the path. “Also, that glass vial Hal gave you earlier—we’ve got a lot more of them,” he added. “I guess they need special handling?”

“Oh yes,” Mrs. Hudson agreed, following him back to the door. “Now everyone just hold on!” she announced firmly, and it took John a moment to realize she wasn’t speaking to him, but rather the animals. “Just stop where you are for a moment and let us bring in this cargo.”

The creatures more or less obeyed, more after she grabbed an impatient dog by the back of the neck and ordered him to the end of the line, which was rapidly lengthening. John climbed up into the back of the van and kept his hand on the stack of vials as James rolled them backwards down the ramp. They were deposited inside a large cargo elevator, which John was sure he would’ve noticed in Mrs. Hudson’s kitchen before. They repeated this procedure for the other two stacks, and when the elevator door closed on them James and Mrs. Hudson seemed rather relieved.

“Alright, what was in them?” John wanted to know, ignoring the snake slithering over his shoes as the animal line resumed.

“Well, knowing Hal,” James conjectured, “probably children.”

John goggled at him. “Sorry?”

“Hal has a soft spot for children,” James expanded. “I’m told he was going around the world collecting them. Often homeless ones or—“

“And putting them in _tubes_?” John had to interrupt.

“That’s how Q moves plants and animals around,” James shrugged. “He says they’re reconstituted at the end with no problems. You can fit an adult elephant in a tube that size, so I imagine that’s several children,” he mused. “We used a different technology, called biomech, for larger things, like whales.”

John imagined James had some very interesting stories to tell. But then another thought struck him, one that made his stomach clench and go cold. “There’ve been reports of children going missing,” he remembered from the news sites, before he’d stopped reading them. “Whole school buses, classrooms, pediatric wards, orphanages—“

James gave him a sober look. “Like the zoo animals. Easier to pick up all at once.” John couldn’t get past the feeling of horror, the sinister calamity of a whole room or building full of children suddenly vanishing, the anguished parents on video pleading for their return. “John,” James said, and his tone was almost gentle, “their lives will be saved, if they’re here.”

“And their parents’ lives won’t be worth living anyway,” John added before he could stop himself. How could you care that the world was ending, when your own world already had, the day your child disappeared from school?

James was not the sort of person who was going to agree with him. But at least he could somewhat understand where John was coming from. “The Earth is doomed,” he said carefully. “Anyone who makes it here will be saved.” He gave John a narrow look. “Don’t tell me you don’t want to run out into the street and grab every child you can find.”

Actually that particular thought had not yet occurred to John. He had been preoccupied thinking of everyone he knew of—from celebrities to cousins he hadn’t seen since childhood—and how he could contact them and get them to bring their families to Baker Street. He was no particular royalist, but he kept thinking of Prince George who’d just been born this year, and how in the end his parents would be like any parents with a child they couldn’t save, despite their wealth and privilege. Unless of course Mycroft had deemed them worthy of escape.

That was what John _had_ been thinking about. But now he realized there was no time for convincing and planning, the deadline was _tomorrow_ and it was time for triage. He knew all about that: save who you can, leave the rest.

James’s eyes widened when he saw John’s expression. “That wasn’t meant as a suggestion—“ he started to say, as John turned away and headed for the door to the hall. There was a park a few blocks away, could he carry a child back from there without being stopped—

“And _this_ is _exactly_ why I didn’t want him told!” Sherlock thundered, bursting through the door John had been aiming for and blocking it.

John’s eyes blazed at him. “The world is _ending_!” he sputtered angrily at Sherlock.

“Well that’s not _my_ fault,” Sherlock chose to point out.

“I’ve got some more pick-ups to make,” James announced, and escaped the kitchen.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” John demanded of Sherlock.

The other man crossed his arms over his chest. “And what would you have done?” he asked.

“I would’ve—I would’ve—“ Nothing terribly substantial came to John’s mind. “I would’ve _known_ ,” he insisted, as if this was reason enough.

“You would’ve _worried_ ,” Sherlock accused. “You would’ve worried and questioned and _told_ everyone—“

“Yes!” John agreed vehemently. Everyone _should_ be told. Everyone who had a chance of getting here on time, anyway.

“—and sounded like a crazy person,” Sherlock judged. “At best ineffective, at worst making those we’d barely convinced change their minds.”

He seemed so secure in his opinion, but John wasn’t buying it. “I don’t think you even thought about it that much,” he shot back. “You just didn’t _bother_ telling me, like you don’t bother telling me _anything_ —like that you have two other brothers, for instance!” That seemed a significant omission as well.

Sherlock actually dared to roll his eyes. “Hardly worthy of note,” he claimed. “Anyway, you just would’ve asked questions about _that_ , too. Where are they, what are they like, can we get together for a Christmas pudding—“

Sherlock was getting increasingly sarcastic in tone, but John didn’t see why. “Yes, _exactly_!” he confirmed. “That’s the sort of thing _normal_ people talk about, about their own brothers—“

“John, we’re hardly normal!” Sherlock snapped in exasperation. “We’re aliens trying to salvage a few bits of Earth before it blows up!” He paused. “Did you know that bit?” he checked.

“Yes, James told me.”

“Oh good.”

John sighed and sat down at Mrs. Hudson’s kitchen table, slumping across it. He was suddenly exhausted, worn out from the wrenching thoughts that had been racing through his brain. Sherlock sat down across from him, trying to figure out what to say next. “It’s a lot of bother, John,” he finally tried to explain. “Organizing, collecting, convincing people…”

“And you thought I couldn’t help with that?” John suggested, chin still resting on his arm as he looked at Sherlock.

“I thought it would make you _sad_ ,” Sherlock replied, a bit helplessly.

“I was always going to be _sad_ , Sherlock. My planet’s about to blow up.”

“Yes, but now you’ve been sad for less time.” Sherlock evidently found this perfectly sensible, but his optimistic expression faded as John gazed steadily at him. “Possibly this was not the right choice?” he allowed, a question in his tone.

John sat up and rubbed his tired eyes. “No, it was not,” he agreed, “and you are a complete git for not telling me important things.”

“Oh.”

“And I wish you would _learn_ from this,” John went on, while he still had Sherlock’s attention, “because if we’re about to go gallivanting through space together, I expect there will be a lot of other important things I ought to know.”

Sherlock looked like he honestly hadn’t thought of it that way. “You’re just so good at going with the flow, John,” he said, apparently meaning this as a compliment. “So placid and trusting and unquestioning.” John rolled his eyes. “Mycroft always remarks on it, I think he’s terribly jealous because Greg is always pointing out holes in his plans—“

“Oh honestly,” John interrupted. “Everything I’ve ever known is about to be destroyed, and all you can think about is one-upping your brother.”

Sherlock did not seem to see a problem with this, but he at least took John’s hand. “But you’ll be safe,” he promised, the sincerity in his eyes intense and unyielding. John felt himself being drawn right back in. “You’ll be safe, John. Don’t worry about that.”

John let the tiniest smile tug at his lips. “Well, that _is_ good,” he allowed. Then he took a breath, trying to get his mind into the right zone. “And now that I know what’s going on, I want to help,” he stated firmly. “So, what can I do?” Sherlock was hesitant to assign a task. “Come on,” John prompted. “I could help Hal bring people in, or help James with his pick-ups—“

“No, absolutely not,” Sherlock forbid, in a tone that would accept no defiance. “You’re not leaving the building again. I’ve put a block on it.”

John was not surprised to hear this. “Okay, well, I’ve got to at least go out to the sidewalk,” he negotiated, “because I know Hal is sending people here, and they’ll have bags and little kids, and I might have to pay the cab—“

“Alright, alright,” Sherlock interrupted, as if John had overwhelmed him with details. From now on John wasn’t going to know if he should excuse Sherlock’s quirks as inherent to his alien nature, or if they were inexcusable no matter what. “I’ll put a tether on you. You won’t be able to go farther than the street.”

“Okay,” John agreed, though he had little choice. “Is this a physical harness, or—“

Sherlock waved him off. “It’s done already.”

John didn’t feel any different. “Okay. So I should go to the front and help people in, and show them where to go.”

“Well, if you _want_ ,” Sherlock allowed, as if he couldn’t imagine why someone _would_ want to. “You _could_ just go to your room and have a lie—“

“No.”

Sherlock looked as though he wanted to roll his eyes again. “You know the deadline’s been moved up?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“So it’ll be a madhouse there.” He indicated the front foyer.

“All the more reason you need someone there,” John insisted.

“Well, of course someone’s _there_ ,” Sherlock claimed. A moment ago he hadn’t thought about this post, but _now_ he found it unthinkable that it would go unattended. “One of Mycroft’s assistants, I’m sure.”

“Well, I can help,” John repeated stubbornly. “Or they can go do something else, I’m sure there’s lots to take care of.”

“Yes.” Sherlock seemed preoccupied with something, and met John’s gaze with an expression that boded ill. “Have you checked the news lately?”

John’s hand spasmed in his own. “No. What’s happened?”

“Major earthquakes on the fault lines,” Sherlock conveyed, and John closed his eyes briefly. “California, Japan, Italy. There’s been a lot of damage. People are really starting to panic.” John knew he meant ‘people in the world, who couldn’t possibly get here in time.’ At least, that was what John thought of. “If there’s anyone you want to contact—“

John pulled his hand away from Sherlock’s, suddenly angry. “That’s where telling me in advance would’ve been nice,” he snapped.

“Well, you don’t really have that many friends, John,” Sherlock pointed out matter-of-factly. “I already contacted Stamford and everyone you worked with at the clinic.” Sherlock had insisted he quit that job two months ago. “I’ve talked to all the neighbors. Angelo and his enormous family arrived a few days ago, while you were out. I’ve been looking for your sister but I haven’t found her.” His voice had taken on a slightly pleading quality, and John took his hand again with a sigh. “If you know where she is, I promise I will get her here in time, John,” Sherlock vowed.

John did not doubt him. “No, I don’t know where she is,” he sighed. He could spend these last few hours searching bars and halfway houses across the southeast for his belligerent sister, or he could try to help a lot of other people, who actually had a decent life they wanted to preserve. He felt a little mean thinking that, but surprisingly only a little; maybe the guilt would come later, once the planet had fragmented and there was nothing else he could do about it.

Then another person flashed across his mind, and he gripped Sherlock’s hand tightly. “Molly!” How could he have forgotten about her, except that he also hadn’t seen her for a couple months, since Sherlock quit taking cases or even doing experiments in order to (as John realized only now) work full-time on preparing for departure from Earth.

“Relax, John,” Sherlock dismissed, in that cavalier way of his which was equal parts infuriating and comforting. “Molly is already here.” John let out a sigh of relief. “She came with Irene,” Sherlock added, and John tensed again.

“Irene _Adler_?” he asked in shock. “ _She’s_ here?” Given Sherlock’s fascination for that woman (which John was, admittedly, a smidge jealous of, though not really in a romantic sense) and the trouble she tended to cause wherever she went, John had frankly been glad to see the end of her. But it was just like Sherlock to put _her_ on his list of ‘Earth treasures worthy of saving.’ Only Sherlock’s expression was even shiftier than John had been expecting as he confessed to this. “Sherlock,” John said warningly.

“Well, actually Irene is one of us,” Sherlock admitted, trying to pretend this was no big deal.

Naturally John felt otherwise. “What?! Oh my G-d! Irene’s not—Is she your _sister_?” he guessed in a low voice, quickly thinking back over all their interactions. Maybe it was different with aliens?

“No. _No_ ,” Sherlock insisted, as if this was ridiculous. “Not really related at all, just ran across each other by coincidence. Of course she’ll be joining us,” he added, seeing John’s disapproval.

“She’s a criminal,” he stated flatly. “People have died because of her.”

“Well, not really,” Sherlock countered. “A little blackmail is all. I mean, I wouldn’t let Moriarty on board,” he said vehemently. “That’s why you have to be careful who you invite in, John, don’t say anything to the people coming in—“

Sherlock was not going to make this about _John’s_ deficiencies. “Is Moriarty an alien, too?” he demanded, bracing himself.

“A bad alien, John,” Sherlock claimed. “That’s why Mycroft and I had to stop him, obviously the humans couldn’t have done it on their own—“

John held up a hand to stop him, trying to stay focused. He wouldn’t let Moriarty in either, human _or_ alien. “How did _Molly_ get mixed up with Irene?” he wanted to know.

“Well, I introduced them.”

John thought he’d used up his ability to gape today, but evidently not. “You— _what_?”

“Well, Irene is a lot like me, only she likes females,” Sherlock reasoned seriously. “So I thought they might hit it off.”

John was about to gape again, then he tried to see it from Sherlock’s point of view. Molly had a crush on Sherlock—some combination of his brilliance, arrogance, elegance, and high cheekbones, with the one obstacle being, Sherlock was not attracted to (human?) women. John allowed himself to feel a small thrill at this point—of course poor Molly never had a chance, but potentially some other bloke could’ve caught Sherlock’s eye, goodness knew a lot of them tried, even though Sherlock was totally oblivious to such things. But he had chosen John, seen something in him he wanted to… study, embrace, preserve, who knew with Sherlock. Something that interested him, and precious few things could hold his interest.

But anyway: in Sherlock’s fractured, byzantine mind, this meant that to help Molly (a laudable, unlikely impulse in itself), he needed to find someone who had similar qualities to himself, but _was_ attracted to women.

Enter Irene. The fact that she was _also_ female probably didn’t enter Sherlock’s mind as a possible obstruction. It was sweet, really, John decided.

“Mmm, and how’s that going?” he asked after a long moment.

“Oh, very well, apparently,” Sherlock claimed, as if he was fit to judge such matters. “Well, they’re here together, and Irene seems to have taken Molly on as her particular human, so—“

“Oh good.”

“You may run into them,” Sherlock hedged, still sensing that John did not entirely approve. “Irene has primarily been involved in the preservation of artwork—painting, sculptures, jewelry, that sort of thing. Also lots of young women who I’m told are stylish and attractive.”

John finally chuckled a little at this, at the absurdity of it all. “I guess I will have to get used to Irene as a flatmate,” he decided.

“She’ll have her own rooms. Though,” Sherlock added reluctantly, “she _is_ frightfully bossy sometimes, I expect she’ll want a voice in running the ship.”

With that comment John’s mind seemed to snap shut, perhaps out of a sense of self-preservation. “I don’t think I can handle that right now,” he decided, standing. “I just want to concentrate on getting as many people in as possible.”

“Right.” Sherlock stood as well, but paused by the door to the hall. “Last chance to go to your room instead,” he offered, and John gave him a look. With a sigh Sherlock pushed open the door.


	3. John helps out

The front hall was indeed chaotic, full of people, animals, and luggage all trying to get some place. It had at least expanded from the rather cramped space John was used to, and now the wall opposite the stairs—which normally contained just the door to Mrs. Hudson’s parlor—had several doorways in it, actually elevators John realized. Elevators that people were being packed onto by a harried-looking young man John recognized from Mycroft’s office, who kept pushing back and forth through the crowd, shouting instructions.

“Sherlock, second floor! Mycroft, third floor!” he called out. “Hal, fourth floor! Irene, fifth floor!”

221B Baker Street had not had lifts that morning, so John was beginning to feel like the architecture around here was more flexible than he’d imagined. Which might mean _he_ could have things changed.

“Do they need to be lifts?” he asked Sherlock. “There isn’t really a fourth or fifth floor.” Sherlock’s look suggested this might be incorrect. “I mean, I’ve been on one floor, and opened a door and walked directly into a room on another floor,” he explained. In retrospect he supposed he shouldn’t have just brushed off those occurrences. “So I’m thinking they don’t _need_ to be lifts, finite boxes that take time to move people somewhere. Couldn’t they just be doorways?” John proposed. “Four doorways, one to each ‘floor.’ And one to the basement,” he remembered. “Hal was told to put ‘random children’ in the basement.”

He was looking at Sherlock as he spoke, and the other man grinned as if John was finally catching on. “Yes, looks much more efficient to me,” Sherlock agreed, and John turned to see that instead of the elevators, there were indeed four doorways, which people streamed through much more quickly.

“You need signs above the doors,” John added in amazement, as people tried to decide which doorway to head for (because now Mycroft’s assistant was totally confused). And then the signs were there, as if they’d always been there—a large number on the wall above each doorway, and someone’s name as well—Sherlock, Mycroft, etc.. A door marked ‘Basement’ appeared on the opposite wall, where the hall closet ought to be.

Mycroft’s assistant—John thought his name was Tim—stomped up to them. “You’re changing everything!” he pointed out in frustration.

“Yes, sorry—“ John began.

Sherlock was less apologetic. “Yes, John’s taking over down here,” he declared. “Go upstairs and see what else you can be doing.”

“Lovely job so far,” John called after Tim, who left in a huff. Sherlock started to leave also and John grabbed his arm. “Wait, I still need a door to the animal room,” he told Sherlock.

“Well, make one, John,” he was told. “You’ve seen how easy it is.”

“I thought that was you.”

“No, it’s the ship,” Sherlock corrected. “So, go to it. I’ve got other things to work on.” With that, he detached himself from John and headed back into the kitchen.

John turned back to the foyer, raising his chin a notch in determination. Okay, he’d been in the Army, he knew a thing or two about organizing people. Animals were a bit different, though, he was forced to admit, as he pushed through the crowd and climbed the front stairs for a better view.

There was some wall space at the bottom of the stairs—John thought that it _ought_ to border the building next door. “Could I have a doorway there,” he said aloud, pointing, “to wherever the animals go?” Nothing happened until he glanced away briefly at a noise, and when he looked back, the doorway was there, with a neat label over the frame.

“And maybe some kind of sign on the floor, which animals can read? Some way for them to understand where to go?” An arrow and the word ‘animals’ appeared on the floor after he blinked, and the stray cats and foxes that were squeezing in through the front door among the startled humans’ feet turned swiftly towards it.

“Yes, right in there,” John encouraged, in case they needed encouragement, which they probably didn’t. They seemed to have a good grasp on the situation, and fewer encumbrances than people did. John leaned on the railing and looked down into the foyer again, studying people’s movements. One chokepoint was definitely the luggage and other belongings people struggled with. Good luck parting them from it, though, he decided.

“Who told you to come here?” John called down to the crowd. “Go through that doorway. Come on, move along, let others in.”

A golden retriever barked and tugged on its leash, trying to go to the animal room. “Did you just get that dog?” John asked the man struggling with the leash, who nodded. “Let it go, it will be fine. If you just got a pet because Mycroft or someone told you to,” he added in a louder tone, “you can let it go now, it knows where to go.” Indeed as soon as the dog was unleashed it ran for the animal room.

“Who told you to come here?” John repeated, as the crowd was turning over rapidly. “Go through that doorway.” Then he stepped outside to the street and started helping people out of cabs and toting their bags, as he’d promised Sherlock. No sign of this restrictive tether yet.

He was beginning to be able to tell the groups apart, he thought. Fur coat, high heels, thick makeup, lots of luggage? Must be Irene’s girls, who all looked like models. Wary, weary-looking women, possibly with children and belongings in shopping bags? Hal’s. Extended families, who mentioned to John that their moving vans were pulling into the alley in back were invariably Mycroft’s chosen, who’d had more time to prepare themselves—John assured them their things would be taken care of (having peeked through the back door a couple times to check) and urged them to get through Mycroft’s doorway, making room for those who were still coming in. Few people went through Sherlock’s doorway, and most were poorly dressed and occasionally disoriented—part of his homeless information network, John speculated as he guided one scruffy, fragrant man through the doorway. Nice of him to put the word out among them.

John hadn’t seen anyone from the clinic though, which worried him. Of course they might’ve already arrived. Or completely ignored Sherlock’s message, knowing him only as the slightly mental flatmate/boyfriend of their former co-worker. Well, a second try was worth it, John decided, and he sat on the stairs in the foyer and set out a mass text to every number he had, including all his ex-girlfriends, his favorite take-away restaurants, and the one drycleaner who would still handle Sherlock’s things (given the alarming substances they were often stained with).

_Get to 221B Baker Street_ , he texted. _Bring your family. It’s safe here._ He paused after he sent the message, trying to imagine how he would react to such a suggestion, even in a perilous time. Then he prepared a second message. _I know it sounds mad, but please come. Tell everyone. Hurry, today._ He sent it, then put the phone back in his pocket and hoped at least a few of them took him seriously.

Then he returned outside, squeezing past the crowd going in the opposite direction. The front of Baker Street was like an airport drop-off, with people piling out of cabs, their bags surrounding them on the sidewalk. It looked like some people had just driven themselves and left the cars where they’d parked, which was quickly going to clog the street. John wished he had some valets or something to whisk the cars away. “We need to get these abandoned cars cleared out,” he muttered to himself, about to call Sherlock for help. Then he turned away for a moment, and when he looked back, all of the empty cars were gone.

Okay, so he had some power over the street, too. Interesting.

Now he stood off to the side and took a longer view of the scene, with an eye towards greater efficiency. An energetic stray dog nearly knocked down a small child in the doorway; a cat was almost stepped on by someone else. “Could I have a separate entrance just for the animals over here?” he murmured, looking at the foyer window to the left of the door, which was useless as far as he could see. If it didn’t let people, animals, or goods in, it had no purpose to John right now. “Maybe a shallow ramp and a half door—“

He looked away, prepared to be disappointed in case he’d reached the limit of his or the ship’s abilities, but when he turned back, there was a wide ramp stretching from the sidewalk to the house, across the light well for the basement window, leading to a hole the size of a half-door—large enough for all the usual London street animals. Immediately they diverted from the front door to their special entrance.

Abstractly, John realized this was amazing. Talk about remodeling. He could potentially have anything he wanted in Baker Street—forget his own loo and walk-in closet, he could have an office, a home theater, a library… But right now such thoughts were only a mild distraction as he watched the crowd outside the row house.

“We need to deal with the luggage better,” John mused. “A chute on the other side of the door,” he decided. “Labeled. Maybe that will help some.” A moment later such a slide appeared, to the right of the door, looking similar to the animal ramp but slanted downwards, with a sign reading “Bags” above it.

John cut across the line of people on the sidewalk and peered down the chute, which ended in darkness. “Someone will be moving the bags and reuniting them with their owners, right?” he said to it. There was no response, but then again he wasn’t sure what to expect. “Okay then.” John glanced back at the sidewalk, where a man was struggling with two rolling suitcases. “Here, can we slide those down here?” John asked him. “One, at least. There we go, thanks.” The suitcases dropped down the chute, not exactly reminiscent of the airport baggage check, but one thing at a time.

A few minutes later John broke off handling luggage to dash over and pay a cab. “No, I’ve got it, don’t worry,” he told a woman who was digging in her purse. “You go on.” He pulled his hand out of his pocket holding twice what the driver was owed—Earth paper money was soon going to be useless except as a collector’s curiosity, might as well make someone happy with it one last time.

John ducked his head into the cab to pay. “Hey, mate, what’s going on here?” the driver asked as he took the cash. “You havin’ some kind of party?”

“It’s the end of the world, and this is a safe house,” John informed him, surprised by how matter-of-fact he sounded. “You should come back with your family right away, today.”

The cabbie stared at him a moment, then burst into laughter. “Alright, mate,” he replied, shaking his head. “Have a good one.” He pulled away as John stared after him—not offended, but rather inspired.

James had said telling people this was the end, and that Baker Street was the only means of escape, would cause chaos. Well, they were down to the wire now, the world was _already_ in chaos, and John felt people needed to know what to do. Maybe they wouldn’t believe him, maybe they would dismiss him as a lunatic, but he had to try.

John stepped off to the side and turned his phone’s camera on himself. “My name is John H. Watson,” he began, trying not to overthink this. “I’m a physician, and a former captain in the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers. The world is going to break apart soon—that’s what all these earthquakes are about. If you’re in the London area, you need to get to 221B Baker Street right now.”

He turned the phone around to show the scene at the front door. “Bring your families, pack light, just hurry and get here. It’s the only place you’ll be safe.” He aimed the camera at the animal ramp. “If you work at an animal shelter or something, let the animals out. They know to come here.” He decided not to mention the cats specifically, for fear of seeming even crazier, and turned the camera back on himself. “221B Baker Street, London. You need to get here tonight. Tomorrow could be too late.”

John turned off the camera, wondering if this was going to convince anyone at all. Quickly he uploaded the video to YouTube, then put a link and a shortened form of the message out on Facebook, Twitter, his blog, and every email address he had. He’d missed several calls from the people he’d texted earlier but didn’t want to get bogged down in phone calls right now; instead he sent another text to everyone, promising this was real and they needed to get here _now_.

Would John have believed anyone who told him this, without the proof of being around Sherlock and his increasingly unexplainable powers for the last several months? Honestly, he doubted it. Except, maybe if it came from someone known to be reliable (as he hoped he was), and if the world really _did_ seem to be going crazy, maybe he would check it out, thinking there was nothing to be lost by doing so, and wanting to be _doing_ something rather than just sitting at home watching the news and feeling the walls shake. The earthquakes were quite frequent now, such that John almost didn’t register them, like a sailor getting used to uneven roll of a ship at sea.

“Come back here with your family as soon as you can,” John kept repeating, this time to another cab driver, before he went to throw some more bags down the luggage chute. Things seemed to be going well inside, with people able to figure out which door to go through. Lestrade’s name had been added to Mycroft’s above door number three, when police officers’ families began showing up and asking for the Detective Inspector.

Not the actual police officers, John noted with a mix of frustration and misty-eyed pride; they were all working, helping to quell riots, put out fires, direct traffic around damaged roads, and generally try to calm the panicking citizens of London. Maybe some of them would make it here before the end. Same with medical personnel—John had been contacting everyone he knew, figuring that doctors would be at a premium once medical schools and most of the primary literature no longer existed—and some had come while others were tenaciously at work. At first John had favored the ones who were still trying to help people, in his mind; then he realized that only the ones who got to Baker Street would be able to help humanity in the future.

He thought maybe more people were showing up. There was an increased sense of urgency among the crowd as night fell, anyway. The street remained clear, fortunately, with abandoned vehicles vanishing from view, which was quite a neat trick, and the cabs seemed to be more crowded, frequently large vans instead of cars.


	4. John lets someone in

John had just assisted an older man with a cane through the front door when suddenly he spotted a young woman lingering near the animal entrance. She might have been a teenager, or barely older, in curiously plain, almost old-fashioned clothes; and she carried a small child in her arms, whose face was buried against her shoulder. There was something… noticeable about her to John, and he threaded his way over.

“Hello,” he opened to her, trying to appear non-threatening. “Did Hal tell you to come here?” She seemed very hesitant.

She shook her head, though. “I heard this place was safe,” she remarked vaguely.

“Yes, absolutely,” John assured her. “Go ahead, get in line.”

She didn’t move. “I’m Lucy, and this is Jamie.” She indicated the child in her arms, who still didn’t look at John.

“I’m John,” he replied, trying to be tolerant as he glanced around to see if anyone else needed his attention. “It’s scary, isn’t it? But don’t worry, this is where you’ll be safe. Where are you coming from?”

“A long way,” she answered, gazing nervously around at the line streaming into the door. “I don’t want to be left behind,” she added tremulously, and John gave her a narrow look at the phrasing, which seemed to suggest she knew the house was actually something mobile. But maybe he was reading too much into her words; everyone was getting frazzled and tired.

“I promise you won’t be left behind,” John told her, putting a hand on the back of her shoulder to encourage her forward. “But you need to get inside.”

She looked at him sharply. “Inside?”

“Yes, inside,” John repeated carefully. Maybe she was from Sherlock’s homeless network, with some kind of mental illness. “I promise you’ll be safe if you go inside. I won’t leave you behind. Go on in.”

Lucy took a deep breath as she stared at him, as if she thought he might take it back, and John gave her a tiny push. After a moment she joined the line of people going up the steps into the front door, glancing back at John over her shoulder a couple times. He waved at her and saw her cross the threshold, then shook his head and jumped back into paying for a cab. Then he had to deal with someone in a wheelchair, which John was somewhat surprised he hadn’t encountered before; he ordered up a ramp over the front stairs, which was unfortunately a bit steep due to the narrowness of the sidewalk.

John pushed the woman up and then through the doorway for Mycroft. Increasingly people were diverting into door number two, marked for Sherlock and John, people who didn’t really look homeless; but whatever, at this point John just wanted to keep the line moving. He wondered if maybe at some point he ought to go through one of those doors himself and see what actually happened to people, and if going through the wrong door was really a problem. Because if it wasn’t, one _big_ doorway might be even more efficient—

“John.” His name was spoken softly behind him, but somehow he heard it despite all the hubbub around him. John turned and saw Lucy standing off to the side in front of the stairs, out of the way but not going anywhere.

He joined her, taking on a stern expression. “Lucy, you need to go through one of these doors,” he told her. “It’s okay, you’re safe now, but you need to go on through a door. Look, there’s my name, you can go through my door, okay?” He put his hand on her shoulder again, and this time an icy cold feeling went through him, strong enough to take his breath away for a moment. “Sorry, I—“

Jamie started to squirm in Lucy’s arms and turned his face slightly towards John’s. Immediately John saw, or had the sense, that there was something wrong with it… horribly so. “Is he okay—“ John started to ask, and then Jamie turned towards him fully, stealing his breath a second time.

John had seen faces like that before, in Afghanistan when someone was caught by a roadside bomb—the force was not enough to kill them, but the shrapnel rearranged their face like a ghoulish Picasso painting, especially months later when they’d managed to stay alive but couldn’t get to, or afford, a surgeon skilled enough to bring them a semblance of normalcy again. Such people, John had noticed, tended to just fade away—you saw them less and less around the village, and one day you realized you hadn’t seen them for weeks and when you asked around, people claimed they’d gone to visit a cousin in another village, even those who were just children. And you never saw them again. No one wanted to live with a face like that—to see it in the mirror, or across the breakfast table.

All this came flooding back to John with such immediacy that he could almost smell the pungent air and feel the stiffness of constant sweat under his clothes. But then he blinked and drew a breath, and he was back in the foyer at Baker Street, where it was actually a little bit chilly and smelled slightly like wet dog and tea, and oh yes the world was ending, and there was a boy with a damaged face before him.

“How did this happen?” he asked Lucy, reaching for Jamie. The boy shied away and John paused, then continued. “It’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you,” he said in a soothing tone. He glanced at Lucy, who was just staring at him. “I’m a doctor,” he assured her, turning Jamie’s face under the light. “How long ago did this happen? Is he in pain? I need some kind of clinic, fully stocked—“ He hoped Sherlock had thought to get medical supplies. John could’ve helped with _that_ , at least.

Lucy took John’s arm and he felt cold again, and like he’d done something terribly wrong but couldn’t think what. “You promised we would be safe,” she reminded him urgently. “You promised we wouldn’t be left behind.”

Realization struck him, dread clenching his stomach. “Oh G-d,” John murmured, gaping at her. “I shouldn’t have invited you in.” This was what Sherlock had warned him against, this girl who seemed docile enough and this boy with the horrible face, one eye staring at him and one ghosted over, peering in the wrong direction. He had been in guerilla warfare; he should have known the enemy could take many forms.

“You promised, John,” Lucy repeated, as if she thought he might try to kick them out.

John didn’t know if that was even possible. Nor did he know what kind of… disharmony Lucy represented. He just didn’t get the sense of _evil_ from her, couldn’t apply that word to her. There were people in this world who _were_ evil, John believed, whom he would kick off the front steps rather than save, like Moriarty. But not this girl and little boy.

“Yes, I promised,” he agreed to Lucy solemnly. “I promised you would be safe here. And you will be.” He touched the wall, which at one point had held the door to the animal room. “I need someplace special, someplace where these two will be safe, and not left behind,” John said aloud. To himself (and the ship, he hoped) he added, ‘and not hurt anyone else,’ but that seemed, absurdly, rude to say.

When he looked at the wall it had turned into a door under his hand, and he opened it. The space it led to was pitch black. Lucy seemed to see something different, though. “Do you feel comfortable going in there?” John asked her.

Lucy turned back to him with a smile. “Yes, John,” she replied happily. “Thank you.”

“Okay.” Lucy and Jamie, who had put his head back down on her shoulder, walked through the doorway and the door shut after them.

John let out a long breath and sat down on the stairs for a moment. Okay, that had gone well, he decided. _Had_ it gone well? Would their powers be contained? Had he salvaged the situation from his mistake? And most importantly, what the h—l were they? John _did_ want to know—it seemed important, one of those things where Sherlock bothering with the details would’ve been helpful—but he didn’t need to know right _now_.

A horn honked outside, startling John, and he jumped up and looked through the window. A charter bus had pulled up out front and he squeezed out the door to investigate. Traffic had _definitely_ picked up.

The door of the bus opened and Hal bounded off. John almost staggered with relief seeing him. No one else had come down, to help or check on him, though he was sure they were all doing important things elsewhere. It was just nice to be reminded that he wasn’t alone in this.

Hal grabbed his arm briefly and grinned in greeting. “You’re the one who modified this place?” he guessed, somehow. “Fantastic! Very efficient. Glad to see you in the know.”

“Yes,” John agreed. He couldn’t blame Hal for not wanting to be the one who broke the news. But there would be time to discuss that later. “Who have you brought?” he asked, nodding to the bus.

Hal stuck his head back inside, then stepped out as a stream of girls in red plaid uniforms emerged. “Schoolgirls,” Hal replied. The grin on his face as he said this was so much more innocent than most people’s would be. “From St. Murray Stratton!”

“Okay, head for the front door, keep moving, no shoving,” John told them, careful now not to explicitly invite them in. He cut in line and followed them in, redirecting them from the line for Hal’s door to the one marked ‘Basement.’ He’d been wondering what ‘random children’ would look like and supposed this was it. “Go on, through this door, don’t push, keep moving.” They had no coats or schoolbags, represented a variety of ages, and what were they doing all together in uniform at this time of the evening? Yet more questions John didn’t need to care about _right now_ , he decided, making his way back outside.

There had to be a hundred girls piling off the bus, and the regular line was stalled. Another deep honk indicated a second bus trying to come up, and John looked at Hal questioningly. The blond man only shook his head though, denying responsibility. Which meant the bus was probably going to disgorge its passengers whenever it pleased, despite the crowd already there.

John turned back to face the row house. “I need more room!” he insisted, not caring who else heard him. “Double-wide door, bigger foyer, double doors inside.” When he looked back from checking on the second bus—it had fought a bit for right-of-way with a departing taxi—the front door at least was now wider, and Hal was standing at the foot of the stairs (which had returned at some point when the ramp hadn’t been needed) keeping the girls in single file so the rest of the people waiting could use the other half of the entrance.

“Thank you,” John added a bit awkwardly, feeling he might have been a bit abrupt earlier. Then, “Come on, people, bags down the chute, you’ll get them back,” he insisted as people’s luggage took up more space than they did. “Keep only the essentials with you, toss the rest there, keep the line moving! Madam, please, get in line, being safe is more important than things, isn’t it?” This was to an older, well-dressed woman sniffling on the sidewalk. John knocked the suitcase near her down the chute. “Please get in line. There’s a lot of other people coming.”

The second bus began to empty—the passengers looked like Mycroft’s type, good suits, clutching briefcases like their paperwork could save them somehow. John hoped they had practical skills as well, because he had to agree with James about the value of politicians in this situation. Of course they also had their families with them—spouses, children, parents—and then John felt a bit guilty for begrudging them space through the doorway.

“Stay on the right, keep to the right,” he instructed them, since Hal’s schoolgirls were still taking up the left side of the doorway. After a moment he thought to open one of the baggage compartments on the outside of the bus and he saw, with a sigh, that these people didn’t travel light either. Okay, he wouldn’t blame someone for bringing all their worldly possessions if the Earth was about to be destroyed—not like you could just buy what you’d lost somewhere else, especially things like family photos or creative works—well, he supposed anyway, John had never been much of a ‘thing’ person himself. He just wished Mycroft had gotten them here sooner, when there was a little more help to go around.

John grabbed the first bag and then Hal came up beside him. He put his hand on the bus deliberately and winked at John, and the suitcase he’d been holding seemed to melt away. The rest of the compartment was empty when he looked at it. “You got all the bags?” John asked anyway. “Can _I_ do that?”

Hal was about to say no, then looked back at the altered row house. “I don’t know, you’ve done well so far,” he noted, impressed. Then he bounded back to referee the schoolgirls.

“Keep to the right, luggage here, go through the door marked for who told you to come here!” John called to the crowd. He tried to sound authoritative, and busy—sometimes people wanted to quiz him about what was going on, which was sensible for _them_ but not really something John had time for right now. But he didn’t want to sound heartless either, or like he wouldn’t _know_ the answers if asked. Mycroft’s people had apparently already been briefed anyway, and needed little help.

The last few schoolgirls trickled out of Hal’s bus. “You still using this?” John asked him, as Hal hopped back up the stairs—he supposed that meant the answer was yes.

“Going for another load,” Hal confirmed. He paused just inside the bus. “Meg and the kids haven’t come yet,” he added, sounding a bit worried. “Keep an eye out, alright?”

“Alright,” John agreed automatically. “How will I—“ But the bus doors snapped shut before he could ask Hal more about them, and the bus began to lumber away.

Instead John jumped onto the second bus as the last few people climbed off. The driver was a fiftyish woman who looked unimpressed with most of life. “Do you have another job after this?” John asked her.

“No, I’m gettin’ off the streets,” she told him brusquely.

“You should get your family, your neighbors, everyone you can find,” John advised her. “Pick up anyone you see on the street, and come back here. This is the only place that’s safe.”

The woman snorted at him, but the world had been too weird lately for her to completely dismiss him. “Okay,” she said with light sarcasm, and John obliged by following the last person off the bus so she could leave.

If _he_ could get hold of a bus, though, _he_ could drive round the streets, gathering people up and bringing them here—would that work? What if the other streets were getting choked with cars and the chunks of masonry that were beginning to topple from buildings further down the block? He needed a bus with a plough on the front, to push abandoned cars aside. Was that crazy? He could drive to some of the public squares where people tended to congregate, or maybe to a bad neighborhood where people didn’t own cars and couldn’t afford cabs—

Wait, he was allegedly tethered so he couldn’t get far away, John remembered with a rush of disappointment. And also, truth be told, some relief, because as much as he wanted to help bring people in, he didn’t think he could handle the time-wasting questions and arguments those people might present. At least in his current position everyone he met had come on their own to Baker Street, which was a good sign as far as believing went; and even if they were still sometimes reluctant, John felt comfortable leaving them alone to join the line in their own time, which tended to be pretty fast.

And he’d never seen anyone come back out once they’d gone through the numbered doorway, not even the former military policeman who’d promised to return and help John once he’d gotten his family settled. John didn’t blame him, though; he didn’t know what kind of processing awaited people on the other side of those doorways, how long it took to get names and bags and medical information and whatever else was needed. If it was up to him, he probably wouldn’t let anyone come back out just as a matter of principle, in case they wandered off for a smoke or something and the world disintegrated before they got back.

_Someone should take a bus and drive around looking for people_ , John texted to Sherlock, Mycroft, Lestrade, and Anthea. He left out the part about the plough, not wanting to micromanage.

Sherlock’s reply was swift. _Not you!_

John rolled his eyes. _I know._

_Good idea, mate_ , Lestrade sent back after a moment. John could almost see his placating smile.

_We’ll look into it_ , Anthea answered, dismissively John thought.

Whatever. Now was not the time for bitter thoughts about his colleagues, John decided. He didn’t know precisely what they were doing, but he was sure they weren’t lounging around eating bon-bons. Maybe they were dealing with the people John funneled through the doors, getting them settled and sorted— _someone_ had to be. And various trucks of goods were still pulling up in the alley to be unloaded into Mrs. Hudson’s kitchen, at least whenever John stuck his head in there to check.

John wormed his way back inside and climbed the stairs to look down on the foyer. It was definitely larger now, and all the doorways were doubled as well, except the one to the basement, which seemed to be okay at the moment. John really didn’t want a sign above it reading ‘random children,’ that seemed like bad PR.

“Who told you to come here?” he called out above the crowd. “Go through that door. Let your pets go, they know where to go.” That seemed to be the kitchen now, for animals who had missed the separate entrance.

“ _You_ told me to come here, mate!” called a voice from below, and John blinked down at the blue-collar man waving to him. He had a grin on his face and John didn’t get the sense he was trying to have a serious conversation. “I was here an hour ago driving a cab, and you said to come back with my family, so here I am!” There seemed to be a woman and two kids with him.

“Good man,” John told him heartily. “Right through door number two.” The cab driver went on his way, filling John with some measure of satisfaction that his recruiting efforts were not in vain.


	5. John's family expands

Then three small children crossed the threshold, drawing John’s attention immediately. There was a definite tingly aura about them, and when the girl—who seemed to be the oldest and in charge—looked up at him, he directed them towards him, meeting them at the bottom of the stairs out of the traffic flow.

The girl wore a purple dress with a matching sweater, and she had long red hair and freckles. In one hand she dragged two small rolling suitcases that were hooked together; her other hand tightly gripped that of a younger boy, with blond hair and solemn blue eyes. His other hand was held by a slightly older boy, who dragged a third case behind him. It was the third child who made John really stare—he had dark curly hair, pale skin, and blazing blue eyes, plus a restless, inquisitive energy that was alarmingly familiar. He was Sherlock in miniature, a sight John never thought possible to see.

For a moment they just gazed at each other, and John sat down on a step more at their eye level. Then he finally tore his eyes away from the little Sherlock to do a double-take on the blond boy. John had never been that good at seeing family resemblances, but this child was the spitting image of a photograph that had sat on his mother’s mantel for years, which John had looked upon with increasing disdain at every visit since she was uninterested in having an updated version to go with an updated life—it was his own school photo, probably the first he’d ever had taken. This boy was a bit younger, maybe four, but he could be John’s son easily, and that was a creepy thing to realize, especially with the number of ex-girlfriends John had.

The girl, at least, did not obviously resemble anyone John knew, though there was a certain familiarity about her, not to mention the tingly aura—more Holmes siblings Sherlock had failed to mention?

“Who are you?” John finally asked. He took comfort from the fact that they had walked in the door of their own accord.

“I’m Lily,” the girl told him, “and this is Arthur—“ The little blond boy.

“I’m Finn!” interjected the dark-haired boy brightly. “I think you’re John, because Daddy said you would look like Arthur.”

John felt his eyes widen precipitously, until they started to sting a little. Then he remembered Sherlock was an alien, Baker Street was a spaceship, and the world was ending, so it was high time to stop being surprised by things. “Okay, yes, I’m John,” he agreed to the children. “And who is, er, Daddy, exactly?” He couldn’t help tripping over that question, just a little.

“Sherlock,” Lily answered, which was what John had unexpectedly expected. “He looks like Finn.” Finn grinned at this honor, showing off two dimples that John wasn’t sure he’d ever seen on Sherlock. Then Lily frowned at him, and John saw more than a touch of Sherlock in her face, too. “Daddy said you would be our papa,” she told him, as if worried they had come to the wrong place.

John grinned suddenly, the warmth of good news welcome after all the bad he’d heard recently. Sherlock magically had little alien children and wanted John to help raise them! John loved children but had basically given up the idea of ever having any, especially considering that Sherlock didn’t seem to like them at all. Apparently he’d been holding out on John. Well, what else was new.

“Yes, of course I’ll be your papa,” John promised them, opening his arms. The children rushed into them gratifyingly. “But where’ve you come from?” John asked, hugging them close. Their auras seemed less tingly now, more smooth and cozy. “Who brought you here?”

“We brought ourselves!” Finn claimed. “We had an _adventure_.” Arthur squirmed in closer to John, his body language saying he did _not_ like adventures.

“Daddy told us to come from where we were before,” Lily tried to explain.

“And where was that?”

John sensed he was not going to get an exact location. “It was above a sweet shop!” Finn described. Clearly this was an important feature to him.

“Alright, well, you’re all here now and safe,” John assured them, rubbing Lily and Finn’s arms, and kissing the top of Arthur’s head. “So let me just—“

“Oh, finally.” John turned to see Sherlock thumping down the stairs, his attitude more impatient than overjoyed at the arrival of the children. “What took you so long to get here?”

“The Tube was shut down,” Lily replied, breaking away from John, “and we had to walk.” Sherlock at least put his hand on her head in a paternal way.

“Sherlock! Why didn’t you tell me about them?” John admonished. “We should’ve gone to get them!” Dark thoughts about what could have happened to them on the way here, alone in the chaos, started to intrude and he shoved them away.

“Oh nonsense, John,” Sherlock refuted, scooping up a giddy Finn. “They’re hardly ordinary children. No need to coddle them.” John’s expression—if Sherlock had bothered to examine it—said very clearly that there would be a great deal of coddling in the children’s future, once all this business about the Earth blowing up was done with. “Come on, let’s put you in your room,” Sherlock instructed, holding out his hand to Arthur, who took it readily. “John, bring the bags.”

Somehow John was not surprised by this behavior and just picked up the three small suitcases, eager to see what Sherlock did with the children. “They have a room? Where?” he asked.

“Right across from yours and mine,” Sherlock replied over his shoulder, which made no sense because last time John had checked, their rooms were on different floors.

At the top of the stairs Sherlock looked down the hall towards the door to their flat, or what used to be their flat before it became Mycroft’s cat-filled command center. “Don’t we need to go that way?” John encouraged when he saw Sherlock hesitate.

“Mmm, let’s take a shortcut,” Sherlock demurred, setting Finn down and opening a door that ought to have been a storage closet. Instead it led to a serene, neutral-colored hallway, which Sherlock herded them all into with a distinctly furtive air.

The door shut behind them and the sudden silence took a moment to soak in. “See, here’s my room,” Sherlock said, pointing to a door that literally had his name on it in gold letters. “And there’s yours.” Another down the hall, bearing John’s name. “And here is _your_ room!” he added the children. The door listed all three of their first names.

Sherlock opened it, revealing a spacious playroom. There was a couch and television, child-sized tables and chairs, bookcases and shelves and bins, though curiously not that many toys or books as yet. Still, it was cheerful and colorful, and John was going to be impressed if Sherlock had thought it up himself. “There’s Lily’s bedroom,” Sherlock went on, nodding to a door on the left, “and there’s Finn’s room, and Arthur’s.” Two doors on the right. “And the loo at the back.” He released Arthur’s hand and herded the children into the center of the room. “So, go play, or go to bed or whatever,” he advised. “Don’t leave this room. I’ll see you later.” And he turned to go.

John stopped him. “That’s it? You can’t leave them here alone!” he insisted, trying to keep his voice down.

“They’ll be _fine_ , John,” Sherlock claimed in that patronizing tone of his. “I already told you, they’re not ordinary children, and the ship will look after them.” John was not satisfied with this, and Sherlock began to get stubborn. “Look, John, we’ve _both_ got quite a lot to do yet,” he pointed out, immediately causing John to feel guilty for neglecting his duties in the front hall. “They’ll be perfectly safe in here.”

“Yes, alright,” John agreed with a sigh. Then Sherlock took his hand and squeezed it unexpectedly, giving him a slight smile, and disappeared out the door.

John turned back to the three children, who were staring at him. “Okay,” he said brightly, parking their suitcases by the couch. “Come here.” They rushed him, hugging his legs, which John thought he would never get tired of. “Now Daddy and I have to go back to work,” he told them in a reassuring tone, “because it’s very important that we get lots of people inside the house so they’ll be safe, like you are. You just stay here and play, alright?” He smoothed down Finn’s unruly curls and Lily’s long, straight hair. “Oh, are you hungry?”

“The ship will get us food,” Lily said in a grown-up tone, stepping away from John. She encouraged the boys to do so as well. “It’s alright, Papa. We know you have a lot to do.”

“Okay.” John found it incredibly difficult to pull back from them. His children, his children with _Sherlock_ —Arthur really _could_ be John’s biological child, from the look of him—John didn’t want to part from them for a moment. But they were safe, and lots of other people weren’t yet, and John needed to help with that. He forced himself to go out in the silent hallway and shut the door behind him, exhaling deeply after he did so.

Compartmentalizing. That’s what he had to do as a doctor and in the Army—think about the task right in front of him and how to do it well, not about all the other things of lower priority. “I need a door straight to the foyer, please,” he requested, and then there was one, just beyond the corner of his eye, like it had always been there, and he would’ve seen it if he’d turned his head a bit more.

The door deposited John at the foot of the front stairs and he plunged back in to the crowd. His goal was to make it as self-sufficient as possible; a large sign above the doorway labels asked people to choose who had told them to be here, and to choose door number two if they didn’t know better. The luggage chute outside received a friendlier look, more like package handling at the post office and less like chucking your bag down a well.

Someone still had to pay the cabs and encourage people to get in line, though—John’s wallet never seemed to lack for cash, though the cabs were getting fewer, and sometimes the drivers zipped off without getting paid, or just got out of the car with their fares and walked into Baker Street as well. People were arriving more by private car or on foot or bicycle, some without luggage at all and looking more and more frantic. John didn’t dare stop any to ask them what was going elsewhere in the city, or the world.

Then, it was back inside to make sure no one was clogging up the works with slow decision-making, and to see that the chains of uniformed schoolchildren who occasionally popped in were directed to the basement. ‘Children without adult guardians,’ John decided that sign should read, though such people necessarily required more guidance than a mere sign.

“Excuse me.” John turned to see a well-dressed young woman of perhaps twenty, smart-looking with a couple of suitcases.

“Did Irene send you?” John guessed. “Door number five.”

“Actually I’m looking for James Bond,” she said with confidence. “He doesn’t seem to be listed.”

“Uh, no, you’re right,” John agreed. They were nearest Irene’s door. “Why don’t you go through number five anyway, and we’ll sort—“

“Ella!” James burst in from the kitchen and embraced the girl with unexpected emotion, then held her back with a stern expression. “You were supposed to take the ship in Leipzig, what are you—“

“I wanted to come here and surprise you,” she cut in, obviously glad to see him. “You said the end of the week, but all the transportation is shutting down—“

“The deadline’s been moved up, I texted you—“ Ella shook her head to say she hadn’t seen that message, and James decided to stop focusing on the past. “Well, you’re here now,” he conceded with relief. “I’m glad to see you.” He seemed to finally remember they weren’t alone. “This is John, he goes with Sherlock, Q’s brother,” he introduced efficiently. “This is my daughter, Ella.”

John smiled at her and shook her hand, surprised but pleased. He hadn’t exactly gotten a fatherly vibe from James earlier. “Nice to meet you!” ‘So glad you could make it’ seemed a little tacky, when not making it meant death. Though apparently there was another spaceship James knew about in Leipzig, which was somewhat comforting to John.

James glanced back over his shoulder, slightly preoccupied. “I need to get back to—“

Ella was not unfamiliar with this reasoning. “Of course, go, I’ll be fine.”

“I’ll take her somewhere safe,” John promised James, and the other man gave him a look of (very restrained) gratitude. James squeezed Ella’s hand one last time, then strode off to the kitchen again.

Ella took a breath, as if something she had been a little anxious about was finally over, and turned to John, who had just had a possibly brilliant idea. “Are you good with small children?” he asked, leaning his hand on the wall and thinking about a passage to the children’s room.

“I’m studying to be a preschool teacher,” Ella replied, which was magnificent news to John. Then her expression fell. “Well, I _was_ …” Earth universities were about to become mere memories, and that was a little less magnificent to John.

“Well, I wonder if you’d mind staying with some children for a while,” he checked. He opened the door that had appeared and led Ella and her bags into the serene, neutral hallway. “Their room is very safe.”

“Of course,” Ella agreed, gazing around with some amazement. She didn’t let her amazement distract her, though, and John suspected she’d easily noticed how he made a door appear where there was none before. She had her father’s fierce intelligence and pragmatism despite her looks, which were preppy edging on glamorous—in fact she seemed like she could be a master assassin in disguise, John decided.

Well, perhaps his imagination was starting to get the better of him. “Right here.” He knocked quickly on the door bearing the three children’s names, then opened it and immediately heard crying.

Arthur was sitting on the floor, sobbing, while his siblings knelt around him worriedly. Lily was actively trying to comfort him while Finn looked slightly sheepish.

“What’s going on?” John asked, navigating the toys they’d strewn about. Arthur reached up to him pleadingly and John picked him up, marveling at how he had _weight_ to him, but didn’t actually feel _heavy_ —like John had suddenly become quite a bit stronger. “Hush, you’re alright,” he told Arthur, rubbing his back. He was warm and solid, and though John hated to see him in distress, there was satisfaction in being able to alleviate it. “Shh, you’re alright. What happened?”

Lily gave Finn a pointed look. “Finn told him the planet was going to blow up,” she revealed.

“Well, it is!” he insisted defensively.

John glanced back at Ella to see if she was aware of this. Apparently so. Good. Then he sat down on the couch with Arthur on his lap and signaled the other children to join him, which they rapidly did. Ella perched alertly on the edge of the cushion. “Yes, the planet _is_ going to blow up,” John told them matter-of-factly. “That’s scary, isn’t it?” They all nodded. “But you three will be safe here,” John went on calmly, “and Daddy and I are working hard to make sure lots of other people will be safe, too. Here’s someone I want you to meet,” he segued quickly. “This is Ella! She’s your cousin.”

They turned to regard her and she smiled brightly, unintimidated by them. “Hello!”

“Can you introduce yourselves?” John prompted, and they did so, with Lily telling Arthur’s name. John realized he hadn’t yet heard Arthur say anything, and he leaned down to Lily in an attempt at discretion. “Does Arthur speak?”

“No,” she shrugged.

Okay then. “Ella goes with your uncle Q’s family,” John went on. “Have you met your uncle Q?” The children shook their heads. Well, John hadn’t either, and from her expression, neither had Ella. “Anyway, you’re cousins,” John repeated, encouraging the children back off the couch, “and she’s going to stay here with you for a little while. Okay?” Lily nodded obediently, Arthur still clung to him, and Finn was staring at Ella with great concentration.

“You’ve come from university in France,” the boy pronounced, so much like Sherlock making a deduction, overtly proud of himself but in a cute way. “Do you speak French? _I_ speak French.”

“Yes, I do,” Ella agreed without batting an eye. “Do you know this song?” She started singing ‘Frere Jacques’ and Finn and Lily joined in, with Arthur clapping his hands in time.

This let John finally set him down and stand, creeping towards the door. Not ordinary children—he remembered Sherlock’s words with disdain. They seemed wonderfully ordinary to him—well, they weren’t just alien adults in miniature, that is. Obviously they were exceedingly bright, and there was the odd issue of Arthur not speaking, and somehow they’d traveled here all on their own. John intended to ask Sherlock quite a lot about them later.

But for now he had to get back to work and he slipped out the door, feeling much better about leaving the children with a trustworthy adult who knew what she was doing. The foyer was chaos when he walked into it again—it seemed like a busload of random people had just arrived, perhaps people who had been picked up wandering the nearby streets (John dared to hope his idea had been followed), and they were much more likely to demand answers of John than calmly follow the signs.

“You go in there,” John encouraged one sobbing child, opening the door to the basement. “Mind the—“ No stairs, just a hallway. Good. John shut the door on him, feeling slightly callous as he did so but forgetting it a moment later when a man accosted him.

“What’s going on? Why is this place safe?” the man asked John accusingly. John wanted to ask _him_ why he’d come if he had doubts, but then realized he himself might have reacted the same way and tried to be patient.

“It’s safe,” he merely repeated in a soothing tone. “It’s safe from the earthquakes. Is your family here?”

The man glanced around a bit helplessly, and John saw three children—teenagers, probably—watching them with concern. He suddenly realized what a privileged position he was in—he thought of Lily, Finn, and Arthur and what he would be feeling right now as their father, with the world shaking apart around them, unsure what was happening but excruciatingly aware that he couldn’t protect them on his own.

“You’ve brought them to a safe place,” John assured the man, putting a hand on his shoulder. “They’ll be fine now. You need to take them through one of those doors, just use this one here.” They were closest to Irene’s, oh well. Still the man hesitated. “Do you need to call someone, and tell them to come here?” John guessed, and the man nodded. John did not suggest letting the man go after them himself—John would not allow anyone who’d crossed their threshold back out if he could help it. “Okay, why don’t you come here—“ John opened the door to the kitchen and found it replaced with a small, quiet lounge.

“You contact everyone you know and tell them to come here. There’s the address.” There was a small placard on a table with a map and directions. “You have a mobile?” The man nodded as he and the teenagers trudged into the lounge, stiff with fear. “Everyone you can think of,” John repeated to them. “All your friends,” he added, gazing at the teenagers. “Facebook, Twitter, everything.” He shut the door on them, hoping they complied. Maybe people had the opportunity to do this after they’d gone through the numbered doorways? But for some reason John suspected not, and anyway it seemed like it would make this particular fellow feel better to do it before.

As he stepped back out into the foyer, John was nearly run over by another line of schoolgirls, these in green-and-yellow plaid, their hair whipping by as they fled through the door to the basement. Inspiration, and a ginger braid, struck John. “Hang on, you—and you,” he said, pulling two teenage girls out of line. “You’re in the house, you’re fine,” he assured them when they squawked in protest. He opened another door to another lounge. “What I need you to do is contact everyone you know and tell them to come here, where it’s safe,” he instructed, indicating the two laptops on the table. “They must come immediately. Can you do that? Good.” He didn’t give them a chance to respond but just ducked out into the hall, where he nearly ran into Hal bearing a quizzical expression.

“What’ve you done with my girls?” he asked curiously.

“Social media,” John sputtered, trying to convey his idea without feeling overwhelmed by its importance. “They need to tell everyone to come here! The more people that say it, the more people will see it, and the more will believe it—“

Hal nodded slowly. “There’s not much time left, John,” he added, putting a comforting hand on his shoulder.

“There are _millions_ of people in the London area,” John countered fiercely. “Have we collected _millions_ of people yet? No? Then there’s still some people to be saved.” He felt slightly fanatic about it and knew this must show on his face.

After a moment Hal shrugged, agreeing. “Okay, I’ll have the kids send out messages before they’re processed,” he said. “Once they go through those doors they generally can’t communicate with the outside world,” he warned. “I’ll change it for mine, but I’m not sure you’ll convince the others.”

“Even if just some people do it, it will help,” John asserted, and Hal shrugged again and disappeared through the basement doors. John stared hard at the crowd squeezing into the foyer, which seemed too small again though he could see the expansion he’d asked for was still in place. “The people going through that door,” he murmured, staring at door number two, “are partly mine. I want them to reach a lounge first, where they’re encouraged to contact others and tell them to come here, before they continue on to processing. Can you do that?” John saw, very clearly, a pulse of light above door number two, and took this for an affirmative answer. He felt he wouldn’t be able to make such a change for the others, but his door and Hal’s now represented roughly half of the incoming people.

That wasn’t enough for John. “I need a permanent lounge for communications,” he decided, wondering when ‘lounge’ had become his preferred term. “And a sign.” Then he hurried up the steps for a better view of the crowd. “Anyone who needs to contact others, go to the lounge first!” he shouted down. “Your mobile won’t work once you go through those doors! Stop and go to the lounge first—call, IM, Facebook, Twitter everyone you know, tell them to come here, where it’s safe! They need to hurry!”

A few people started diverting to the lounge, then more and more—not usually whole parties, but one adult from a group, or an adult and a teenager. John suspected there was something guiding them beyond the message he had shouted, almost like it was being repeated to the crowd even when he wasn’t there. Remarkable thing—very good for organization, since he couldn’t be everywhere.

His plan was to go back outside next, but then a sobbing woman caught his eye—she was clearly looking for someone, turning around and around in the foyer as if she had just overlooked them. She didn’t seem likely to give up soon so John approached her.

“What’s wrong? How can I help you?” he asked, taking her arm.

“My son—“ she choked out. “I don’t know where my son is—“

“Okay,” John said soothingly, drawing her to a corner out of the way. “You think he came here?”

She nodded vigorously. “Yes, yes, we were together, he went ahead, and we were separated—“

“Okay. Is there a way to find out who’s already here?” John asked, and the woman looked at him with a startled expression—but he wasn’t talking to _her_. He felt his mobile buzz in his pocket and pulled it out to see a list of names scrolling by on the screen, which he took as a yes. “What’s your son’s name?” he prompted the woman.

“Killian Phillips.”

On John’s mobile screen, an alarmingly complete profile on Killian Phillips popped up, including a photo, fingerprint scan, and school records. The boy seemed to be about eight years old. He showed the photo to the woman, just to make sure.

“Yes, that’s him!” she asserted with excitement. “Where is he? Is he here?”

John’s eyes scanned the display until he found the information he wanted. “Oh, he’s in the basement,” he realized. “I must’ve thought he was alone. Um, I guess you can go down there,” he added, looking around for any signs of contradiction. Seeing none, he opened the basement door for her and shut it after, before she could react. Hopefully she would get where she needed to be; everyone else seemed to.

Outside was a mess. People surged off buses and out of private cars; some staggered around the corner as if they’d walked a long way or were injured. The vehicles disappeared as soon as they were empty, almost too conspicuously now, but at the end of the street John saw some crashed cars blocking the road, beyond the reach of the ship presumably. He tried to get closer to investigate but finally felt Sherlock’s tether, tugged back as surely as if there was a rope tied around his waist—he couldn’t get farther away than the width of the next row house. So he settled for texting Sherlock et al. about it.

Suddenly, the electricity went out—not at 221B or its immediate street lamps, of course, and the car headlights still cut arcs through the darkness until they were abandoned. But the rest of the block, the whole city as far as John knew, was pitch black. Frankly he was surprised it had lasted as long as it had. Now Baker Street stood out even more, a beacon in the night.

As John helped people up the stairs into the foyer—more came in wounded now—he wondered with some frustration what the lack of electricity would mean for his social media campaign. Surely the satellites wouldn’t yet be affected, but cell phone towers and the servers that hosted the websites could be down, not to mention computers and telly broadcasts. He just hoped the message had gotten out far enough.

John refused to look at the time as he rushed back and forth through the doorway, summoning the ramp back to ease people’s passage. It had to be close to midnight, but there was too much to do. People seemed to follow instructions well once they got inside but still needed to take that first step on their own. The injured were helped by others through the numbered doorways; John hoped there was some kind of clinic they were going to and felt perhaps he should be working _there_ instead, but another part of him didn’t want to leave the door and risk one less person getting in.

When he stopped for a moment on the stairs, he felt suddenly tired, and forced himself up only sluggishly when he was approached by a blond woman with three children. “Hello,” he said briskly. “Can I help you?”

She smiled, wearily. “I hope so. I’m looking for Hal. Do you know him?”

Well, it was an easy one, at least. “Ah, Hal sent you?” John surmised. “Right there, door number four.”

She glanced, but didn’t move. “Actually Hal told me _not_ to use the regular door,” she revealed. “I wasn’t sure what he meant until now. I think he was going to have a separate room for us?”

For a moment John felt rather weary of difficult people—the world was ending, they were being saved from certain doom, did they have to demand first-class accommodations as well? Not that _this_ particular woman was being demanding; in fact she was waiting very patiently while John’s brain processed her words slowly.

“Oh, are you Meg?” he suddenly thought to ask.

This made her smile, to know Hal had talked about her. “Yes, I’m Meg York,” she replied, shaking John’s hand. “These are my children, Bess, Nell, and Kit.” Kit appeared to be the youngest, a little boy clutching his mother’s hand; Bess was the tallest, perhaps eight.

“Hello,” John said to them with a smile. “This must all be very exciting for you!” He didn’t get a response but didn’t really expect one; this time of night they must all be dead on their feet. “I’m John Watson, I’m with Sherlock, Hal’s brother,” he added to Meg, who nodded with recognition. Hal at least told his significant other about his family members. “Do you have any bags?”

Meg gave him a faint smile and pulled one of the glass vials from her pocket. “Just this.”

“Right, you’re set,” John agreed. One could apparently fit an entire house into those things. “Well, I don’t know exactly where Hal wanted you to go, but I can take you somewhere safe,” he offered, bringing up a door on the wall.

They passed into the blissful silence of the pale hallway. “These are my rooms, and Sherlock’s,” he told Meg. “Here’s where _our_ children are staying, I’m sure you’ll be fine here.” He knocked quickly on the door to the children’s room, then opened it. Ella was kneeling at the little table helping Finn with an art project—lots of glitter seemed to be involved—and Lily and Arthur were playing with blocks on the floor. All looked up at his entry and smiled, and Arthur propelled himself up and dashed headlong at John, who scooped him up, laughing.

“There’s my good boy!” he felt moved to say. “Are you feeling better?” Arthur nodded and cuddled against him. “Everything going alright?” he asked Ella, who stood and brushed glitter off her clothes.

“Oh yes,” she promised. “I’m afraid none of us are tired enough to go to bed, though.”

John drew in his latest guests. “Meg, this is Ella, she goes with Q and James.” He could see how family relationships became complicated around here. “Meg goes with Hal. I thought maybe you could all stay here for a while. Would that be alright?”

“Of course,” Meg replied. “Thank you so much.”

“You guys look tired,” Ella was saying sympathetically to the children. “There’s some extra beds in the other room.” Of course there were.

John kissed Arthur’s cheek and put him down, then watched as he ducked behind the couch to peer at the newcomers warily. The ages would seem to mesh well, which was nice for cousins. He thought he remembered that Lestrade had three children with his ex, maybe a smidge older than this lot, whom John had seen about the place last week. Surely they were in the house somewhere, probably sound asleep. Not sure about the ex.

Ella and Meg carted the new children off towards bed—of course they didn’t want to go, no matter how tired they were—and John couldn’t stop himself from lingering over his own. He listened to Finn explain his rather complicated and ambitious art project, and Lily showed him the structure she was building out of blocks. It seemed to exist mostly for Arthur to knock over with his toy dump truck, but she didn’t mind, and he was delighted. Even with the noise and the mess—John had barely touched anything at the art table but still seemed to be coated in glitter—he felt oddly at peace in the nursery, fulfilled and happy. He forgot his stress for a moment and just reveled in being able to think of _his children_.

But after a few minutes his conscience nagged at him and he reluctantly climbed up from the floor (though less stiffly than he’d feared). “Lily, can you tell Meg—the lady who just arrived—that I will make sure Uncle Hal knows she’s here? I’ve got to go now.” Lily nodded dutifully and John threw himself back out in the hall and shut the door before he could change his mind.

It was then he realized he didn’t have Hal’s phone number, so he once again contacted everyone in the house he _did_ have numbers for. _Can someone tell Hal Meg and the kids are here safe?_

_Just ask for his number_ , Sherlock shot back, which made John feel rather foolish. His mobile had, after all, been turned into a database of everyone in the house, so why shouldn’t he be able to obtain any number he wanted?

“Um, I’d like to text Hal, please,” he said aloud, and the phone display changed to the texting screen, with Hal as the recipient. John decided to try another function. “Message: Meg comma kids here safe.” The words appeared on the screen as though he’d typed them, correctly and without mistakes due to interpretation. “Signed, John. Send.” The text was sent, and John grinned. “You’re better than Sherlock, he takes things too literally most of the time,” he told the phone. It made no response to his compliment, though, and then he felt foolish again. Rolling his eyes, he plunged back into the foyer and then outside.

It looked like the building across the street had collapsed since he’d last been out, the rubble rather neatly piled along the opposite sidewalk so as not to block the street. The dust must’ve been terrific, though. There seemed no abatement in the number of people coming in, many on foot and others on buses. When he ducked into one of the buses, he thought he recognized the driver.

“Aren’t you with Mycroft?” he asked the young man.

“Yes,” he replied shortly. “Would you get off, I’ve got to take this bus back to Kingston Station and pick up another load of people. There’s hundreds of them holed up there.”

“Good luck,” John told him quickly, hopping back onto the pavement. The fact that Mycroft was sending out buses to rescue people made John grin broadly, though in retrospect it wasn’t really a ‘grin’ sort of moment. He liked to think he might’ve inspired Mycroft in this activity, but he doubted the eldest Holmes would ever admit to that. Well, that wasn’t the important part anyway, was it?

Another bus pulled up as Mycroft’s retreated, and the person who jumped off it first had a definite tingly aura. Fine suit worn carelessly, cut-glass cheekbones, piercing blue eyes—“You’re not a Holmes, are you?” John blurted to the man.

He grinned roguishly. “No, thank G-d,” he said in a cheeky tone. “Well, perhaps a touch of genetic crossover on the matrilineal side.”

John blinked at him. “Okay.”

“George!” prompted a woman’s voice from inside the bus. “Do they have room!”

“Hang on, darling, I’ve met someone,” he called back, then drew John aside slightly. “You’re someone, aren’t you?” The question seemed rhetorical as he drew a flask from his pocket and took a furtive sip. “I’ll tell her I’ve got to convince you to take us. Abernathy, George Abernathy, by the way,” he introduced finally, shaking John’s hand.

“John Watson.”

George took another sip from his flask, then offered it to John, who declined. “I just need a moment’s peace and quiet,” George claimed, though to John the sidewalk in front of 221B was anything but peaceful and quiet. “Seemed like a good idea at the time, going to Africa to save the poor children, but good _Lord_ , there are a lot of them, all with little squealy voices, and they get underfoot worse than cats.”

“We have got a lot of cats here,” John warned him, and George rolled his eyes at the trial of it all.

“We were supposed to catch the ship in Cairo,” he went on, hiding his flask as a blond woman stuck her head out of the bus and stared at him, “but the gits left two days ago, so I had to take a boat with the little scamps.” He shuddered slightly.

“If you’ve got children on the bus, they should get in line quickly,” John told him, unmoved by his tale. They didn’t have eternity here, and John had other people he could be attending to.

“Right. Show me where they go,” George requested, easily crossing the threshold when John went back inside.

“Hal’s been putting random children in here,” John explained, opening the basement door.

George seemed to see something in the blank interior that John didn’t. “Nah, Susanna will want her own spot for them,” he declared. “Do you know how many different languages they speak in Africa? Completely excessive.”

“Special place for George and Susanna’s children,” John requested, opening the kitchen door. It looked about the same as the ‘basement’ to him, an empty white room whose walls faded into the distance, but George liked it.

“Excellent. Keep that open and I’ll send the tykes in,” he declared, hurrying back out the door.

A moment later the blond woman entered, followed duckling-like by a line of fearful children. All were dark-skinned, wearing grey and blue school uniforms with little raincoats. John waved at her, and she sent the children racing towards him, or more accurately the open door beside him. She stayed at the front door, making sure they all got inside.

Once the trail had been established John left his post and threaded his way through the crowd to join the woman. “Hello. Are you Susanna?”

She gave him a distracted look. “What? Oh, I’ve lost count!”

“Oh, sorry,” John told her, sensing her displeasure. She seemed a very serious person who didn’t suffer fools. “Uh, let’s see—“ He pulled out his mobile and hoped it could tell him how many children had gone through the new door. Thankfully, a nice big counter appeared on the screen, which he showed her.

She took it proprietarily. “Mm. Yes, I’m Susanna,” she finally confirmed in a no-nonsense way, watching the children’s behavior closely. “No shoving. Hurry up. Watch your step. End of the hall.”

“Uh, I’m John,” he finally said, since she wasn’t going to ask. “Are you—human?”

Susanna gave him a startled look and he wondered if he’d spoiled some secret. “Yes, of course,” she replied, as if she vastly preferred it that way. “Are you?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, I thought so.” John felt faintly diminished by her tone. “Who’s in charge around here? I have something very important to deliver.”

“What sort of thing?” John asked. He would never claim to be in charge, of course, but he was at the door to help.

Susanna hesitated, clearly uncertain of his worth in this matter, then finally opened her purse and took out a small square object, about half the size of a deck of cards, which glowed electric blue.

“Ooh, what is _that_?” John asked, fatally.

She pulled it back towards the safety of her purse. “You don’t know?” she surmised in irritation, and started looking around for someone else.

Traveling through space with her was going to be _fun_.

“Well, what is it?” John repeated anyway.

“It’s biomech,” Susanna told him impatiently, which he thought sounded familiar. Something Hal had said, about using biomech instead of the little glass vials for collecting children.

“Mrs. Hudson!” John summoned. “That’s our housekeeper,” he explained to Susanna. “She takes care of things like this.”

“Is she—“ Mrs. Hudson appeared beside them, smiling beatifically. Susanna sized her up with a glance. “Can you take care of this?” she asked, showing her the biomech square.

“Oh, yes, of course, dear!” Mrs. Hudson promised her. “How lovely.”

“It’s _very_ important,” Susanna emphasized.

“Oh yes. Shall I put it with the others?” She indicated the kitchen door, which children were still trickling through.

“Yes, right away.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Hudson,” John called after her as she bustled off. He glanced at his mobile, which Susanna still held. “Could I—“

“They’re not all here yet,” she exclaimed in frustration, then looked out the door. “George!” He was helping the children climb down the steps of the bus and cross the sidewalk, while the world swayed under them. A building down the block lost a chunk of masonry, which crashed onto the sidewalk.

“I’ll go give him a hand,” John decided.

As soon as he stepped over the threshold he wobbled, like some kind of funhouse ride he really ought to be wearing a helmet for. One of the children fell to the sidewalk and started to cry, and John scooped her up. “You’re alright,” he soothed, carrying her a few feet to the doorway and setting her inside it, where Susanna took over.

“Come on, get going, get in line, on your feet,” he encouraged the others, herding them from the bus to the doorway. They seemed to be down to the last few, who had been less able or eager or leave the bus.

“Did you get the luggage?” Susanna asked George when he ferried the last child to her.

“Yes, I did. I’ll get rid of the bus,” he planned, stepping back outside, but Susanna grabbed his arm.

“There’s one missing!” she proclaimed.

George’s eyes widened slightly. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure!” Susanna shook John’s mobile with the too-small number displayed on the screen, looking like she was going to cry. “We have to get them all, George! We have to get them all.” She clutched the child she was holding to her and kissed his head, and John suddenly realized her prickliness was in some ways a façade, her show of strength as she tried to rescue as many children as she could, with no one allowed to get in her way. John could understand that feeling; he would probably appear prickly himself in her situation, or perhaps he already had.

George responded to her more sincerely than his dissolute image would’ve suggested. “Alright, I’ll go back and look, probably still on the bus,” he assured her, rubbing her arm.

John followed him across the listing sidewalk back to the bus. “Wait here so he can’t run out,” George told John, who stood on the steps, holding the door frame, while George searched the seats. The bus, the whole world, swayed continuously; John wondered if the spaceship could make the area in front of 221B a little steadier, then realized—as windows burst further down the block—that this area had _already_ been stabilized and protected a great deal. More might not be possible. They were lucky the bus hadn’t been tossed sideways, like a ship in a storm.

“Gotcha!” George called out, and plucked a small sobbing boy from under a seat. “Oh, what are you crying for? You’re going to be alright.” His tone was affectionate and the boy clung to him as they exited the bus. “Little scamp! Hiding under the seat when you should be making a run for it.”

“Is that all of them?” John checked as George passed the child to Susanna.

“I hope so,” George replied, as if he wasn’t going back for any more (which John doubted).

“Yes, I think so,” Susanna decided, and finally gave John’s mobile back to him with a dismissive air. “I’ve got to get them settled. Are you—“

“Be there in a moment, darling,” George assured her, and she hurried off through the marked doorway. As soon as her back was turned George took another nip from his flask and shuddered slightly, and John smirked, no longer fooled by his disdainful air. “Alright, I’ll get rid of the—“ He saw with surprise that the bus had already disappeared, and glanced at John. “Nice trick,” he complimented. “I thought you were human.”

John was surprised by this comment. “I am. It’s the ship.”

George looked as if he didn’t quite buy this. “Mm-hmm.”

Before John could ask him about it further, though, he heard a sharp voice on the stairs call his name. “John! Get back inside!” Sherlock stood there, hands on his hips like he’d done something wrong, and John scooted over the threshold into the foyer, out of the way. “Why are you still up?”

John thought the answer ought to be obvious. “The world is ending, so I thought I’d help out,” he responded flatly.

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “You look exhausted, you’re going to bed.” Then he frowned. “George? What are you doing here?”

“Missed the ship in Cairo,” George replied lazily, leaning against the door. John took his arm and moved him over so he wasn’t blocking anyone. “Mycroft said there was room, if we hurried.”

“Are we in danger of filling up?” John asked in alarm. There were so many more people to be saved—but one also had to think about the carrying capacity of the ship, if they were too heavy to lift off properly, and what about provisions for everyone—

“Of course not, George is just being stupid,” Sherlock declared, and George smirked. “Well, since you’re here you can watch the door,” he assigned, taking John’s arm firmly. “Come on.”

Going to bed _did_ sound rather nice—when John stopped moving he could hardly stay upright without leaning on something. But it still felt like he was abandoning his post. “Make sure they go through the right door!” he told George by way of advice. “And if mobiles are still working, have them contact their friends and family before they go through.” Sherlock was trying to push him through a doorway he’d opened up. “And you have to help them inside, and pay the drivers and tell them to bring their families back—“

“Don’t worry, I’ll figure it out,” George assured him casually.

“Come _on_ , John—Where the h—l are we?”

Well, if Sherlock didn’t know, John certainly didn’t. In the room Sherlock had dragged them to, everything was sort of… blue, with black at the edges, and roaring with white noise, like being in some kind of neon-infused nightclub set in a wind tunnel. A rather unlikely place to find in 221B Baker Street, John thought, slightly loopy with fatigue now, but honestly who knew anymore. A figure appeared, silhouetted against the light, or was it the dark, and Sherlock seemed to recognize it.

“How did you get in here?” he demanded angrily. “You’re not catching a ride with _us_ —“

“He promised he wouldn’t leave us behind,” said a voice, echoey but John thought it was familiar.

“Lucy?” he croaked. “It’s Lucy and Jamie,” he explained to Sherlock, who looked very artsy and exotic with his face highlighted by the odd lighting. Very alien, yet attractive.

Even when he was looking appalled. “John, _you_ let them in? I _told_ you—“

Jamie hopped down from Lucy’s arms and trotted over to John, who automatically knelt down. He was wearing a cap that mostly hid his face and John braced himself for when he looked up, determined to treat him as if he looked like everyone else. He was astonished, then, when the boy’s face looked somewhat more normal—not _actually_ normal, not yet, but much improved.

John cupped his cheek. “Oh, you’re getting better,” he told the boy. “You’ll be all healed up soon. Are you in any pain? How do you feel?”

Above his head, as if from the other end of a long tunnel, he thought he heard Sherlock and Lucy talking. “He has both courage and compassion,” Lucy said.

“I know, that’s why I got him,” Sherlock answered. “You’d better not cause any trouble here, or you’ll be out the door, and good luck finding—“ John didn’t hear any more because the roar of nothingness became very loud, and everything went black.


	6. John's last day on Earth

When John woke up he was in his own room, in bed, and sunlight was streaming in through the window. That in itself told him nothing, though, because it was a fake window; that wall was flush with the neighboring row house. He had not slept deeply enough to forget any of the revelations from the day before, or to think they were a dream, and the first thing he did was roll over and grab his mobile. “Do we still have a planet?” he asked aloud.

In response the telly across from his bed snapped on. The picture was fuzzy, but it seemed to be an American news broadcast. They still had a planet, it seemed, but in the few hours John had been asleep, it had been shaken further and further apart, with earthquakes and tsunamis devastating cities and fracturing the land. Volcanoes had erupted—the ash was filling the air and raining down like fluffy snow on the broadcast, making even air travel hazardous. The American Midwest had been ripped apart by quakes—John hadn’t even realized they had a fault zone there.

Grim tidings to wash his face to, but then his ear caught a repeated advisory, for people to go to ‘evacuation centers’ located in several places around the world. This message was being broadcast from one, the reporter said, and when John took a better look he realized she wasn’t a reporter at all, well not really—she was an alien like Sherlock, standing in the driveway before what looked like a Neoclassical mansion on the American West Coast, and people staggered frantically into the doors behind her.

One of the evacuation centers listed on the screen was 221B Baker Street in London—dumbly, John stared at the telly in the bathroom (because there was one) and watched amateur footage of people arriving at Baker Street in the grey morning light, hurrying into the double-wide, level-with-the-street door—and landing helicopters on the roof as well! Tears pricked at his eyes suddenly and he ordered the tellies off. They were not going to save everyone. They were not going to save planet Earth. But they were going to try as hard as they could, to save as many as they could.

Bursting with energy John left his room, forgetting for a moment that the layout had changed and surprised to find himself in the soft, quiet hallway instead of the slightly shabby third floor of the Baker Street flat. That hallway was no longer necessary, he supposed. Sherlock’s room was next door to his, and the children were across the hall. When he saw their names on the door he was filled with a sudden longing and decided it would be prudent to check on them first. He opened the door and stopped when he saw Ella asleep on the couch, a Winnie-the-Pooh throw over her. The room seemed to brighten of its own accord and she blinked sleepily.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you,” John told her. The playroom was surprisingly clean, all the toys and books back on their shelves and the art table immaculate, with Finn’s glitter-encrusted masterpiece sitting on top of it.

“What time is it?” Ella asked with a yawn, sitting up.

“About six AM,” John replied. “We still have a planet, I think.”

“Oh good.”

“How was your night?”

She stood, folding the blanket efficiently. “Fine. Hal came and got Meg and their kids,” she reported. “And James—er, my father—stopped by and said I had my own room somewhere, but I didn’t want to leave the kids just yet.”

John smiled at her gratefully. “Thank you, that was very thoughtful. They went to bed?”

“Yes, a few hours ago.”

“I’ll just look in on them,” John decided, “and then we’ll try to find your room.”

He went to Lily’s door first and opened it softly, hoping he didn’t wake her. Her room was lavender and white, well-equipped with furniture like a desk and dresser carved with hearts… and a gigantic, detailed diagram of the anatomy of an insect on the wall. Okay. Lily seemed to be fast asleep in her purple and white bed, clutching a stuffed caterpillar, her red hair spread out across the pillow. Now that he thought about it, Mycroft’s hair was kind of ginger—it was radical, but surprisingly not difficult, to imagine Sherlock as a ginger-haired child. If he ever _was_ a child, and not some kind of alien grub. Maybe Lily’s interest in insects was more about genealogy. John decided to duck out before that line of thought could go anywhere else.

He crossed the playroom—Ella was apparently in the loo—and opened the door to Finn’s room, which had a red and blue nautical theme with bright pine furniture. His bed was even shaped like a boat and he was burrowed into it, a teddy bear lying on the floor inches from his dangling fingers, covers everywhere. John put the bear back within reach but didn’t disturb him otherwise, not wanting to wake him, especially if Ella was leaving. She was hardly the hired nanny, and Sherlock seemed confident the ship would look after the children, but John would rather they stay asleep as long as possible.

He went into Arthur’s room last. The décor was dark green and bright blue plaid, with chocolate-brown furniture; it seemed rather dark for a child, but at the same time John found it instinctively cozy and relaxing. When his eyes reached the bed he almost jumped to see Arthur’s blue eyes blinking back at him. “Hey there,” John whispered, and came further into the room.

Arthur sat up readily—he was wearing pajamas now—and pointed towards a stuffed dog that had somehow made its way across the floor. John retrieved it for him and sat on the edge of the bed. “You don’t have to get up now,” he assured the boy, ruffling his golden hair. Had he possibly been so ridiculously adorable at that age? You wouldn’t think his father would’ve left in that case. “Lie down and go back to sleep, okay?” Arthur gazed at him resistantly. “Well, you can get up if you want,” John allowed, “but the others are asleep, and Ella’s going to her own room. So you’ll have to play by yourself.”

Arthur did _not_ want to play by himself and clutched John’s hand, eyes wide. “Come here.” He crawled to John’s lap, warm and pliant. “Shh, you’ll be alright,” John promised, rocking him a little. “I just need to go do some more work first, to help people. You can go back to sleep. Did you know, we’re actually on a magic spaceship, and you can ask it for things?” He was not sure if this reasoning was beyond Arthur, or if him being non-verbal would be a problem. Then he realized Arthur was drinking from a glass of water, which definitely hadn’t been there a moment ago.

“Well, I guess you know what you’re doing,” John decided dryly. “Okay, back under the covers.” He put the glass on the nightstand and tucked Arthur back into bed with the plush dog under his arm. “Bye-bye.” He kissed the boy’s forehead and Arthur smiled, shy and endearing. John could’ve sat beside him all day.

But he forced himself to leave and found Ella waiting for him. He pulled one of her suitcases and she took the other, dragging them into the hallway. John sighed as he shut the door. “They seem like great kids,” Ella enthused, by way of sympathy. “Very bright.”

“I think they’re aliens,” John confessed, and Ella raised an eyebrow. “Did you know about the alien bit?”

“Not explicitly,” Ella admitted, “though my father mentioned spaceships, so I guess aliens often go with that.” She seemed to have more difficulty referring to James as her father, than she did with the aliens.

John nodded. “I just found out yesterday, so I don’t have many details. Which way to Ella’s room?” A golden light, somehow both eye-catching and unobtrusive, flashed at the end of the hall. “The spaceship responds to voice commands, and sometimes thoughts,” John tried to explain as they walked towards the light. “It can do pretty dramatic things, like remodel the house—none of this was here until yesterday.”

“Okay,” Ella agreed. She didn’t sound disbelieving, more like someone who suspected even crazier revelations were coming down the pipeline, so no use getting worked up now. Smart girl.

The light led them to a crossroads, where tasteful gold-on-black signs pointed them down various hallways—apparently most people got their own wings. John turned down Q’s hallway, wondering what this youngest Holmes would be like. He had the feeling someone like James didn’t choose partners easily—not long-term ones, anyway—so he must be someone extraordinary. No surprise there, for a Holmes.

“Here you go.” They stopped before a door labeled ‘Ella Gartin,’ which John presumed was her mother’s name. “There’s James’s room, and Q’s.”

“Where are you going now?” Ella asked him.

“Back to the foyer to see what’s going on,” John replied. “We were on the news as a safe house, what news is left, so I hope people are still coming in.”

Ella opened her door and pushed her bags inside without really looking. “I can help—“

“I _think_ your father would want you to stay here, and be safe,” John noted, then added before she could protest, “but I’m not your father, I won’t tell you what to do.”

Ella grinned at him. “Well, I’ll take a quick shower first, then I’ll come down.”

“Right. What you do is ask for a door—and one appears,” John told her, putting his hand on a doorknob that hadn’t been there a moment ago.

Ella’s eyes widened slightly and he wondered if she had reached information overload yet. “Right, gotcha.”

“Alright, I’ll be in the foyer,” he said. “If you change your mind it’s alright.” He left before she had to react to that.

The foyer seemed messier than he had left it, littered with mud, lost possessions, rubbish. Benches lined the limited wall space, where people too weary to do more than limp over the threshold rested. That wouldn’t do, though; that took up space that could be used by new people passing through, because even at double-wide the door was still jammed with people.

“Okay, can we get this rubbish out, so people don’t trip on it?” John requested. And then, to the crowd, “Can I get some volunteers to help these people through the doors?” A few people broke off from the main crowd. “There we go, arm like this, lean here, lift like that, go slow. Right through that door, thank you.” Other able-bodied people continued to help carry the injured on deeper into the house, as though the ghost of John was still standing there giving instructions. He took the benches away as they emptied, leaving only the most unobtrusive one.

“It’s alright, please don’t shove, there’s plenty of room,” he assured people at the door. Frantic hands reached out to him and he pulled them inside as though up a mountain, though as near as he could tell the front door was still level with the sidewalk, leaving no stairs to be navigated. Those who looked like they could walk further he encouraged to head down to the last door, number five, which was Irene’s; he doubted this level of organization really meant anything anymore but resisted asking for it to be done away with just yet. It was still useful for crowd control, telling people authoritatively that they _needed_ to go through door four or five, rather than letting them all pile up at the beginning.

When John finally worked his way outside he could only stand in open-mouthed horror, looking around with tear-stung eyes at the desolation of London. It was like the worst photos of the Blitz he’d seen in school history texts, only everywhere. The buildings on the opposite block were simply gone, reduced to rubble such that he could see well past them to other parts of town normally out of view. He could see clear to downtown; the city was no more than crumbled piles, the occasional wall or pillar still standing (for the moment), columns of black smoke rising everywhere. In the distance fires raged and sirens wailed; there were more vehicles in the air now, helicopters mainly (heading in their direction!) but also a few light planes and perhaps even military aircraft. He wondered when, finally, they would give up, land, and try to make their way to 221B—hopefully before it was too late. The city might as well have been made of Lily’s wooden blocks, which Arthur had knocked down for his own amusement.

When he tried to move John understood why everyone around him staggered—it wasn’t only because of fatigue or injury, but rather because the ground tilted beneath them like a top slowing on its axis. John didn’t though, and actually looked behind him for any physical manifestation of the sensation he felt (but of course saw none). It was like he was wearing some kind of armor or exoskeleton down his back, stiffening his arms and legs against the shifting terrain. Very handy that, he thought as he slipped his shoulders under people and ferried them to the door. He saw James doing the same at the other end of the last intact sidewalk in London; they made eye contact and nodded, then went back to work.

There were no more buses, or wheeled vehicles of any kind. The street was still mostly clear of abandoned cars and rubble, but beyond the spaceship’s sphere of influence, great cracks yawned in the pavement, broken water mains gushed, and chunks of asphalt were displaced up or down by several inches. Faintly John smelled natural gas and realized the gas lines must have ruptured as well. Beyond the relative calm of 221B Baker Street’s frontage the world seemed even more volatile, and John stood at the very edge of his tether, handing people into the zone, exhorting them to keep going until they crossed the threshold into the house (while carefully not inviting them in). He saw Ella talking to James before taking up a similar job.

There were still animals trotting in as well, looking as ragged as the humans but more used to running on pure adrenaline. John left a basket at the edge of the quiet zone, for those animals who couldn’t make it further, and periodically tipped it gently onto the animal ramp. You could not preserve the complex ecosystem of the Earth in a few cats and foxes; countless species, many never even discovered, would be lost, the conditions that created them unable to be replicated. It seemed a terrible waste; but then John remembered that they were, evidently, only one inhabited planet out of many in the galaxy, each one equally complex as Earth, and that was somehow comforting.

Day had come fully, the morning sun pouring down as though nothing was wrong on the Earth below, when John heard Sherlock’s voice at the door. “John! Back inside now.” He did not really like being ordered around by Sherlock but accepted it because the man clearly knew more about what was going on than John did—for the moment. John refused to rush, though, guiding an older woman over the threshold while Sherlock merely got out of the way. “You’re not to go outside anymore,” Sherlock told him, drawing him off to the side. “We’re close to leaving, before noon most likely.”

“Noon,” John repeated dully. “That’s when—“

“We’re staying as long as we can, most everyone else has left already,” Sherlock went on. It was difficult to tell how he felt about this.

Ella tried to reach through the doorway to help someone in but found her way blocked, like a piece of glass stood between her and the outside. The person entering seemed to have no difficulty, though. “You’re not to go outside, either,” Sherlock informed her imperiously.

“Ella, Sherlock,” John introduced quickly. “James’s daughter—“

Sherlock knew already, or didn’t care, or both. “James is being reeled in as well,” he continued. “Hal and George are going to help people get inside,” he added, as John started to protest. “James is needed in the back. Did you hear about the helicopters? Oh, you did,” Sherlock read from his expression, disappointed at not being able to convey fresh news. “Well, they were _my_ idea.”

“That’s really marvelous,” John assured him, squeezing his arm. “Quite brilliant.” Sherlock offered him a quick half-smile, the kind that almost didn’t dare believe he’d done something praiseworthy, and John realized suddenly how he’d missed Sherlock lately—they’d both been far too busy to spend much time together.

“Do you want to go up on the roof and help with them?” Sherlock inquired. “Anthea’s doing air traffic control”—he rolled his eyes—“but we need someone to get people out of the helicopters faster.” John took this as a vote of confidence in his abilities and straightened up. “Oh, you haven’t had breakfast yet, have you?” Sherlock went on, in a tone that wilted John all over again. “Do you want some tea and biscuits first? Well, you’re always chiding _me_ about not eating,” he added defensively, stung by John’s expression.

John patted his arm again, placatingly. “The world’s ending, I’ll breakfast later, okay? Now how do I get to the roof?”

Sherlock huffed. “The same way you get _anywhere_ , John!” he answered patronizingly, and then strode dismissively off to the kitchen.

John shook his head, too preoccupied to focus on Sherlock’s foibles right now. He turned to Ella. “You want to help on the roof?” he asked and she nodded quickly. John took a final glance out the window to verify that Hal and George were gathering people up; then he put his hand on the empty stretch of wall which made for such convenient exits. “You want to try it?” he offered to Ella at the last moment, stepping aside.

She took his place confidently but admitted, “I’m not sure it will work, I had trouble getting here earlier.”

John didn’t really have any secret tips. “Hmm, try being quite focused on what you want,” he advised. “Say it aloud, don’t feel shy.”

Ella nodded with determination. “I want to go to the roof.” Nothing happened.

“Oh, you can’t stare at it,” John thought to add. “Glance away for a second.”

Ella tried again, this time not looking, and when they turned back there was a door. They opened it and went through, finding themselves on the roof of 221B Baker Street, where John had never been before. If he _had_ ever been, he doubted he would recognize it now—it looked like it had been specifically built as a landing pad for two helicopters, with professional landing marks and lights. Helicopters swirled in the air around the building—military grade, medical, news crews, private craft. It was the only safe way to travel right now, and there were precious few safe places to land.

He and Ella ducked back towards the safety of the door and its entry foyer as two large copters landed in the designated spots. John ran to one as its door opened, assisting an elderly woman out and pointing her towards the door inside. _There can’t be stairs_ , John thought firmly. _That’ll be too slow. She needs to walk straight through to safety._ He was too busy helping the rest of the people unload from the vehicle to see if this change had taken hold, but no backlog was building at the door, so that was a good sign.

The helicopter emptied. “You should come inside!” John shouted to the personnel on board—military, it seemed.

“We’ve got another load to pick up!” one of them called back, shaking his head, and then they took off again. As soon as they and John were out of the way, another vehicle landed.

“John!” Ella yelled, running over to him. “The crew’s left, how do we move the chopper—“ When she turned to glance back at it, her question died in her throat, because the vehicle had disappeared. Like the cars outside Baker Street, John supposed.

“Don’t worry about it,” John advised, as another copter landed on her side. “We need a ramp or slide or something,” he added under his breath, lifting a child down. It was too slow, helping people out one by one. The child was small enough that he had to walk her to the door himself; and when he looked back, other passengers were sliding out of both choppers on inflatable yellow ramps, out of the way and on their feet.

“This way, over here,” John directed, though the door was the only place they could go—the noise and wind from the blades seemed to disorient people, and occasionally they were wounded or otherwise needed guidance. The stairs had, in fact, disappeared and been replaced by a long hallway, which made no sense when seen from the outside. John didn’t think anyone would complain, though.

Some of the passengers were speaking other languages, he eventually noticed. He wondered if they had been airlifted from the Continent, who they were to merit such a measure, or if they had just been in the right place at the right time. As he worked he thought idly of who could get evacuation by helicopter—heads of state and their families, the Pope (surely there was a closer ship to Rome than this one), other governmental figures—that’s who would have the clout, the resources, to organize something like this. There were probably already protocols in place for evacuations by helicopter in those cases, though John doubted the original plans included landing at 221B Baker Street.

What about celebrities? Wealthy business people? Wealth would surely mean little at a time like this, when people could see they weren’t going to have a chance to spend their payments; but if such people already owned helicopters and had loyal people to fly them (or could fly themselves) they would probably be alright.

But, John asked himself, coaxing some more shaken children down the slide, what would the PM or the Queen or Mick Jagger contribute to the future human society? Would they try to carry on as before, replicate the structures of government and power they’d had on Earth? With citizens from many nations, whose government would be copied, anyway?

That wasn’t the category of people John would’ve chosen to save first, anyway.

The next helicopter unloaded a large number of medical personnel still in scrubs and lab coats, some with dried blood on their clothes and masks hanging from their necks as if they’d come directly from an embattled emergency room. _That_ would’ve been John’s choice for saving first—medical personnel and other people with practical skills that humanity would need for sheer survival.

He felt his mobile buzz in his pocket and stepped away from the roar to answer it. “Yes?”

It was Anthea. “ _There’s too many choppers waiting to land!_ ” she told him brusquely. “ _You need to move people faster!_ ” Then she hung up.

Okay. Move people faster.

The next helicopter that landed, the inflatable yellow ramp slid straight through a hole in the roof, with a little shelter over it so you couldn’t quite see where you going. John assumed people would be okay, though, and weren’t ending up in a heap at the bottom.

“How did you do that?” Ella asked between choppers. He’d given her one as well.

“We need to go faster!” John replied instead. When you had to shout to be heard before the wind whipped your voice away, you didn’t have time for nuanced explanations.

There was a sudden explosion, quite nearby, and John’s eye was drawn to the devastation of London he could see all around him. Barely a wall or tower over a few feet high still stood, fires raged through the rubble, and the river—which he shouldn’t have been able to see, even from the roof—was choked with debris and overflowing its banks. They were literally the only thing of any height left standing. It was like looking at the city from an airplane, or a satellite map, and for a moment John could pretend the buildings were indistinct because he was so high above them. But in reality it couldn’t have been more than thirty or forty feet.

Sherlock appeared to grab his arm unexpectedly. John could tell from his expression—so serious but determined, with a slightly tacky hint of excitement—what he was going to say. “No, we can’t stop yet!” John pleaded. “There’s so many more people—“ The city skies were still full of aircraft.

Sherlock put his hand on the helicopter beside John and everyone inside it disappeared, even the pilot. Then the vehicle itself vanished as well. “We’re leaving now, John,” he said solemnly, squeezing his arm as if he would drag him inside.

“No, we can get a few more, if you bring them in like that it will be fast—“

“John. It’s over.” John looked around helplessly, tears stinging his eyes. James and Ella watched from just inside the doorway, and no more helicopters were landing.

John tried to flag one down. “Just a few more—“ Sherlock did have to drag him inside then, shouting over John’s incoherent protests.

“John. John!” The sudden silence of the interior hallway startled him. “We’re closing up. We have to take off soon or we’ll all die—“ Sherlock paused on his own, then flung open a door and bounded into the foyer, John scrambling after him. The front door was still open and people were surging through it, climbing in through the open windows, appearing randomly in the foyer to blink around dazedly. “Hal! Get in here!” Sherlock bellowed.

“Move, people! Go!” John ordered, shoving people none too gently through random doors, into the basement, into the kitchen, he didn’t care as long as they were out of the foyer allowing room for new people.

Sherlock pushed his way to the front door and hung partway out of it. “Hal! _Now_!”

John hurried up the steps, trying to see what was happening outside. He could imagine Hal like himself, wanting to save just one more, one more.

“Hal, we’re shutting the doors,” Mycroft said calmly, and John turned to see him standing on the landing gazing down at the chaos coolly. “Seal off the windows.” They shuttered tight, allowing no one else in. “Sherlock—“

John had a sudden vision of Sherlock tipping out and being left behind to die, and he jumped forward and grabbed him, clinging to the banister with his other arm. Sherlock looked back in surprise, then threw himself backwards unexpectedly. He, John, and Hal—Sherlock’s hand still gripping his arm—ended up in an ungainly tangle on the floor, and Mycroft ordered the front door sealed. There would be no one else from Earth saved.

“Hal!” Meg shouted and hurried down the stairs as the three men righted themselves. Hal looked depressed, the thought of all those still on the other side of the barrier weighing him down, and Sherlock squeezed his shoulder in something like understanding (though John had his doubts). Then Meg and Hal embraced, clinging to each other as the house started to rock, and John crawled across the foyer—which had returned to its normal dimensions when he wasn’t looking—to take Sherlock’s hand.

Sherlock sprang to his feet then and pulled John up as well. “Come on, you won’t want to miss this,” he predicted, taking the stairs two at a time.


	7. John loses a planet

They burst into the living room of their flat, which now had a huge window on the wall that faced the street, and couches lined up before it like seats in a movie theater. Everyone was there: Mycroft with Greg and Anthea, Hal and Meg, Irene and Molly—first time John had spotted them—James with Ella and a young man who looked barely older than Ella, George and Susanna. There was no time to talk to anyone or even wave as Sherlock pulled John onto a couch and then, rather deliberately, put his arm around his shoulders. It was something he only did when he thought John wasn’t going to like what came next.

The view out the window was at first obscured, lots of whitish-grey smoke or clouds. Then suddenly they were looking down on the smoking ruins of London, as if from an airplane. The city grew smaller and smaller beneath them until John could make out other nearby cities as well.

“Is that—“ He didn’t know what to ask. “We’re taking off,” he said instead. “Away from Earth.”

“Yes,” Sherlock agreed.

By that point John could see the outline of the British Isles and part of Europe. Abstractly he thought about G-forces and how they ought to be wearing seatbelts, but he couldn’t feel any motion aside from a slight vibration, like being in an idling car. Now he was looking at most of Europe and parts of Africa and Asia, but they didn’t seem right—the Mediterranean was too large, with islands where none should be, and the mainland had cracks in it, like someone had punched the glass plate on top of the map. _Earthquake damage_ , John realized. The continents were breaking into pieces.

As they pulled away further and further, the cracks widened, yawned open with blazing red tongues spilling forth. Where molten magma hit the sea huge clouds billowed up to obscure the view. Chunks of land—multiple countries—seemed to bob through the water, like leaves on the surface of a pond. The ship turned, or the Earth did, and John sucked in a sharp breath as he saw that the other hemisphere, with North America, was partially gone—like an apple someone had bitten and put back in the bin. Large rocks trailed away from the planet and more crumbled away as he watched. He didn’t realize how hard he was clutching Sherlock’s leg until the other man put his hand over John’s.

Then what was left of the Earth just cracked, like an egg, with a red center caught in a mixer, the shell and contents rapidly swirling away to become mere crumbs in the universe.

And that was that.

Curtains swooped across the window, blocking any further view, and everyone seemed to inhale at the same time, as if they’d forgotten earlier. John could hear people crying softly around him, sniffling; his eyes burned and he rubbed them roughly with his palm, but it seemed too unreal to him, like he’d just been watching the latest sci-fi disaster movie with great special effects.

After a few moments Mycroft cleared his throat and stood, facing the assembly soberly. “I wish to thank all of you for your dedication to this project,” he began formally. “Due to your efforts, a legacy of Earth and humanity will persist throughout the galaxy. I particularly wish to acknowledge the humans who assisted in this.” He glanced through the crowd at them. “Notably, John Watson, whose admirable management of the ship”—Sherlock nudged John proudly, and he finally realized he was being talked about and looked up—“and use of social media saved a great many people.”

Mycroft paused, then continued, “As you know, this is only phase one of the project, and there is still much to be done. Cocktails in two hours in the observation lounge, and strategic planning meeting at 1900 hours in the conference room.” With that, the gathering seemed to be over.

John sat numbly on the couch for a long moment, until he heard Sherlock calling his name. “Oh. Hmm?”

“Are you alright?” Sherlock asked him with a frown.

“Well—no.” John thought _that_ ought to be obvious.

Sherlock didn’t seem to know what to say. “Yes… Um, sorry. About your planet. Really interesting insects. And—oh, did anyone save curries?” he called out to the room at large, and received a positive response. “As far as food went, I quite liked curries,” he added.

“Yeah. You’ve seen this before, huh?” John surmised, and Sherlock nodded.

“It’s what we do, you know.” John did _not_ know. “Study planets that are dying, save what we can.”

“And what happens next?” John asked dully. “To all the humans and-and cats and everything?”

“We’ll find them a _new_ home, John,” Sherlock told him, patting his shoulder. His tone suggested a goldfish whose bowl had broken—easy to fix, and probably wouldn’t even notice the difference.

“Right,” John agreed helplessly. “Where’s that, then?”

“Well, we’re not sure yet,” Sherlock admitted, sounding slightly put upon. “We’ve been rather busy saving everyone!” John nodded quickly to express his gratitude on that point. “But there’s loads of uninhabited planets around, I’m sure one of them would be suitable. Mycroft’s next strategic planning meeting,” he added, rolling his eyes.

John was not quite at the eye-rolling stage yet himself. He hadn’t really had time to think about what he would do after the end of the world, and found himself at a bit of a loss—a curiously unmoored feeling reminiscent of when he’d first returned to London after his discharge. He rubbed his leg unconsciously and Sherlock swooped in.

“There’s so much to do, John,” he claimed briskly. “Some of it rather dangerous, too.” That had worked before. “Traveling through space facing the unknown, exploring new planets for human habitation… just like that silly telly show you watch! Only no horrid uniforms,” Sherlock sniffed. “How can you take seriously people in ugly pajamas?”

John recognized his attempt and smiled weakly. “Yes, I’m quite done with uniforms,” he agreed. He glanced around, seeking distraction. “Will we ever get our living room back, do you think?”

Sherlock’s expression said he hadn’t considered that a priority. “Baker, recreate our original living room in our quarters,” he commanded, speaking vaguely to the air.

“Alright. Do you want the kitchen, too?” John looked around, wondering when they’d managed to save Judi Dench and why she was taking orders from Sherlock about architecture.

“Yes, throw the kitchen in as well,” Sherlock agreed, “but make it… nicer.” He clearly had no idea what this would entail.

“I should think so,” invisible Judi Dench opined. “It was quite small and dark before.”

“Sorry, who’s speaking?” John finally had to ask.

“Oh, that’s Baker,” Sherlock non-explained. “The ship? Or the ship’s computer, I suppose.” John blinked at him slowly. “You’ve spoken to it before, John,” Sherlock pointed out, getting impatient with dealing with these trivialities. “You were having it rearrange the entire house last night!”

“Well, it never answered back before,” John pointed out.

“I didn’t need to,” Baker noted smartly. “Your thoughts were perfectly clear, unlike some other people who can’t focus on anything for more than two milliseconds.”

Obviously this was meant for Sherlock. “Well how long do you _need_?” he shot back indignantly. “You’re supposed—oh, let’s meet Q.” Sherlock bounded off the couch, dragging John along with him, before John could ask any further questions about the computer, like why it was called Baker.

Q was, presumably, the young man chatting with James and Ella. He was smaller than Sherlock but otherwise the resemblance was striking—high cheekbones, full lips, intense gaze (though green instead of blue). John felt thoroughly scanned by one glance.

“Q, this is John,” Sherlock announced. “My human!”

“He was in the Army, and he’s a doctor,” James added, and John gave him a grateful look. Nice that _someone_ understood he was an individual, instead of just ‘Sherlock’s human.’

“How do you do?” John asked, holding out his hand.

“Nice to meet you,” Q replied, shaking it. “Very clever with the social media, none of us would’ve come up with it.” His manner was serious—appropriate for the end of the world—but he seemed sincere.

“Thank you—“

“Yes, I recorded it all,” Sherlock told them. “Should make a fascinating study on the spread of information in a crisis, much like a viral infection—“

“How are the children?” Ella interposed skillfully, pitching her question to John so Sherlock was free to natter on to Q.

“I haven’t been back to see them,” John admitted, feeling a sudden stab of concern.

“They’re fine,” Baker said from above them. “They’ll be having lunch soon.”

“Takes some getting used to, doesn’t it?” James noted of the computer.

“Uh, thank you,” John responded to Baker, slightly creeped out by it eavesdropping on their conversations. “And thank you again for keeping an eye on them,” he added to Ella.

“I like being useful,” she replied simply. “Next I’m going to help Q analyze his samples.”

Hearing his name Q looked up from showing Sherlock something on his phone. “Yes, I’ve got a lovely collection of environmental samples for metagenomics analysis,” he reported with some excitement. His excitement was quieter than Sherlock’s but no less intense. “My plan is to recreate Earth biomes on the ship, to simulate Earth environments as closely as possible, with complete plant, animal, and microbial components—“

“Well, you’re not going to get _complete_ recreation,” Sherlock argued, just to be difficult. “The environments are far too complex for that—“

Q looked affronted. “James and I made extensive data and sample collections, to provide a comprehensive—“

“Not sure what _I’ll_ be doing,” James commented to John while the Holmes brothers got a bit heated over microbial communities. “I’m not really suited to lab work.”

“Oh, when we start working with tigers and sharks, you can wrestle them for us,” Ella teased lightly, squeezing his arm.

James gave her a restrained but affectionate smile and put his arm around her, as if it was a rare treat for him. Perhaps it was, John thought—he must have been very young when Ella was born, and his adventurous history did not leave much time for family.

“You should get some proper sleep,” James judged of her.

She started to roll her eyes. “I don’t need more sleep, I can—“ Ella paused and her face fell. “Oh. There isn’t anything left to do, is there?” John understood this to mean that the urgency had gone since Earth had been destroyed; he felt the same way. James hugged Ella close as tears filled her eyes.

Q broke off his debate with Sherlock to turn to them with concern and curiosity. “Oh dear. Is she having one of those moments?” His tone held a tinge of sympathy, but was mostly scientific.

Sherlock threw his arm around John preemptively. “They do get emotional about habitat destruction,” he commiserated with Q. “Unless they’re the ones causing it, of course.”

“Should we go back to our room?” Q questioned James, who was obviously his expert on all things human.

“Yes,” James agreed shortly, giving John a nod before moving away.

“What will cheer her up?” Q inquired, trailing them. “Lollies? I’m sure we’ve got lollies.”

“John’s not fond of lollies,” Sherlock advised his perplexed brother. “Chocolate biscuits might be better. Or another baked good.”

“She just needs rest,” James diagnosed, sounding mildly exasperated. John was heartened to know he wasn’t the only one vexed by a Holmes.

They watched Q’s branch of the family leave, then Sherlock turned his full attention on John. “Would you like some chocolate biscuits?” he offered with great sincerity.

“No. Thank you.”

“Cinnamon bun?”

“I’m not hungry,” John tried to explain.

“Well, I’m sure you haven’t eaten properly in a while, John,” Sherlock pointed out, “and you always badger _me_ about that.” John sighed, knowing that indeed he really ought to eat but completely unable to muster any enthusiasm for it.


	8. John learns more

“Let’s go see the children,” he suggested to Sherlock instead. When he tried to focus on the positive, they came to mind immediately. “You still haven’t told me where they came from!” As John spoke Sherlock made shushing noises and looked around furtively. “Why are they a secret?” John questioned, more quietly. He didn’t think they could remain a secret for long, not when Ella and Meg knew about them, and thus probably Q and Hal. The only one left to keep a secret from would be Mycroft—John’s eyes narrowed.

“Did you not want your brother to know about them?” he accused Sherlock. No need to specify _which_ brother. “Are they—are they not supposed to be here?” There was no question that wherever the children were, John would be, even if Mycroft wanted to maroon them on some deserted asteroid—

Sherlock was guiding John out into the hall, away from the others. “No, it’s _fine_ ,” he claimed, though clearly it wasn’t. “They won’t have to leave. Honestly John, sometimes your thoughts are _so_ loud, it’s a wonder you don’t attract the attention of the whole room—“

John coughed out a dry laugh. “Don’t pretend you can read my thoughts,” he told Sherlock. “It’s quite clear you _can’t_.” Otherwise their entire relationship would have been very different.

“Well, no,” Sherlock admitted. “I just mean your body language and expression. You’re rather obvious sometimes, and what if Mycroft had looked over right then?”

“What if he had?” John shot back. “What’s wrong with the children being here?”

Sherlock started to answer, then looked around and saw a grey and white cat sitting on a table, watching them. Sherlock took John’s hand and pulled him through another door, which deposited them in the neutral-colored hallway, which was blissfully quiet and empty. “Cats are frightful gossips,” Sherlock dismissed. John nodded as though he had also noticed that. “The thing is,” Sherlock finally confessed, “the children weren’t strictly, well, _authorized_.”

John blinked at him. “Authorized to be aboard the ship?” Where _else_ would they be, but with John and Sherlock? No one seemed concerned about ‘authorization’ when they were rushing to save random strangers—

“Er, authorized to _exist_ ,” Sherlock clarified. He did manage to look slightly sheepish at this point. “I mean, none of the others have their own biological children. It’s a ghastly amount of paperwork to get official permission, and especially with the added modifications—“

John was getting more and more alarmed by this explanation. “Hang on, hang on—biological?”

Sherlock took a breath, as he sometimes had to do when elucidating things for John. Somehow Sherlock could make even _breathing_ patronizing. “Yes, John,” he replied. “Surely you noticed the resemblance?”

“I did, yes,” John agreed. He found his arms crossed over his chest, a defensive posture, and tried to relax them. “Finn looks like you, Arthur looks like me. How did that come about?”

“Genetic engineering!” Sherlock boasted with some excitement. “Of course I only had the rather primitive equipment and reagents available on your planet—couldn’t use the ship’s facilities, Mycroft would’ve found out right away—but I think I did a bang-up job anyway. Finn’s a clone of me, Arthur’s a clone of you, and Lily is a blend of us both. Well,” he reversed, “’clone’ isn’t, strictly speaking, the correct term, as I did tweak the genetics a bit—“

“Okay,” John had to interrupt. He felt the need to sit down and suddenly there was a couch behind him, right there in the hallway. He sat gratefully. “You know you can’t—the ship is always listening,” he noted to Sherlock. “How do you know it won’t tell Mycroft about the children?”

“Why should I?” Baker answered, sounding slightly offended. “I’m not a tattler. Of course if he _asked_ I would…”

“But why should he think to ask?” Sherlock finished. “For a little while anyway. You know, he’s been so busy lately, I just didn’t want to distract him.” John rolled his eyes at the lofty excuse and suspected Mycroft would _not_ be grateful for Sherlock’s ‘thoughtfulness.’ But that was not John’s most important concern right now.

“Alright,” he began, as Sherlock perched on the arm of the couch. “Who’s their mother? Please tell me we didn’t leave her behind.”

“Of course I _wouldn’t_ have, John,” Sherlock insisted, as if he’d never forgotten about anything before. Scores of dairy products left all night on the counter said otherwise. “But, they don’t _have_ a mother. In the lab, I constructed this artificial womb out of gelatin and—“

Fascinating as that was from a medical point of view, John held up a hand to stop him. “Okay. But where’ve they been? Who’s been taking care of them?”

“No one, they look after themselves perfectly well,” Sherlock claimed. “If I’m going to the trouble of genetically engineering children for us, I’m not going to make them irresponsible and dependent.”

“That’s-that’s what children _are_ , Sherlock,” John sputtered.

“Well, perhaps on _your_ planet,” Sherlock sniffed. As if aware this might be a sore point he continued on hurriedly. “But these children are highly intelligent and resourceful. And I had Mrs. Hudson look in on them on occasion,” he finally added.

Well, obviously the children had survived whatever Sherlock had subjected them to—best focus on that, John decided. “Okay. But, hang on—Lily’s a combination of the two of us?” He had a very important question to ask, but stating this description aloud brought a goofy smile to his face—talk about something he’d thought was impossible to achieve, no matter how perfect it would have been.

Sherlock couldn’t help giving an answering smile, and slid down to sit next to John on the couch, putting his arm around the other man. “I knew you would like that,” he predicted warmly. “So sentimental! It was very tricky, technologically.”

“I’m sure,” John agreed, relaxing against him. Needless to say the two of them hadn’t gotten much alone time lately. Though that wasn’t exactly at the top of John’s priority list just yet—but he did want to make sure Sherlock knew how much he appreciated his efforts. “I’m sure you were quite brilliant about it.”

“I was, rather.”

“Have you any supporting documentation you could show me?” John asked this in the same tone one might use for ‘naughty lingerie’ and Sherlock reacted accordingly.

“Oh yes, there’s several Excel files—“

“Not just yet,” John countered, pulling him back down onto the couch. “But I definitely want to see it later, alright?” He tried to focus on his questions. “How old is Lily?”

“Oh, about seven, I suppose,” Sherlock described.

John nodded. “You didn’t _know_ me seven years ago, Sherlock.” He had no doubt there was an explanation for this.

“Oh, did you want her literal age?” Sherlock replied. “Usually you speak metaphorically, I was trying to adapt.” John gave him an expectant look. “They’re all only a few months old, I artificially increased their development to get beyond the damp, sticky stages.”

“Right,” John agreed, because what else could you say to that? At least that meant the children had not spent _years_ fending for themselves somewhere. “And why doesn’t Arthur speak? Has he just not got to that stage yet?” Who knew what alien development was like, with all Sherlock’s tweaking?

However, Sherlock squirmed a bit uncomfortably at this. “Er, actually I made Arthur first. As a surprise for you! I thought you’d really like him.”

“I do, he’s precious, Sherlock,” John assured him, not dissuaded from his question. “They all are. But why doesn’t he speak?”

“Well, as it was my first attempt,” Sherlock admitted painfully, “and I was working with substandard equipment, I may have gotten something a bit wrong.”

He mumbled the last bit and John had to lean in to hear. “You got something _wrong_?” John feared he may have sounded slightly accusatory. “There’s something _wrong_ with Arthur?”

“No, there’s nothing _wrong_ with him, John!” Sherlock insisted. “He just doesn’t speak, that’s all.”

“That’s a rather serious thing, Sherlock,” John judged, not feeling so warm and appreciate anymore. These were _real_ human beings—er, sentient people—you couldn’t just muck about with their DNA if you didn’t know what you were doing. “Will he _ever_ speak?”

“I don’t know—“

“Well how’s he going to get on in life, Sherlock?” John demanded. Wasn’t impossible, he supposed, Arthur could learn to communicate with sign language perhaps, but Sherlock gave the impression of not having really thought about it at all, and that was what irritated John.

“Well the ship reads minds, John!” Sherlock pointed out, defensively. “He won’t have any problems if he stays here!” John rolled his eyes, unwilling to give in. “If you don’t want him, I’ll put him in storage with the other people,” he added petulantly.

John’s eyes went wide. “What?”

Sherlock’s sarcasm was cheap and juvenile. “Oh well if he’s _defective_ —“

“No,” John interrupted, very seriously, and Sherlock could see he’d gone too far. “Don’t ever say anything like that, Sherlock.”

“No, I didn’t mean it—“

“The children are—beautiful, and amazing, and—“

“Brilliant, they’re designed to be brilliant as well,” Sherlock reminded him immodestly.

“I would never give any of them up,” John vowed to him. He tried to impress upon Sherlock how serious he was.

“No, of course not,” Sherlock agreed, but more slowly, like he’d really thought about it this time. “I knew you wouldn’t, not once you knew about them.”

“And don’t ever call them defective,” John warned.

“No,” Sherlock nodded. “I’m sure—well, perhaps Arthur will learn to speak in time.”

“But if he doesn’t, we’ll love him just the same,” John noted. His look challenged Sherlock to go along with this, but fortunately he didn’t seem to need the prodding.

“Of course,” Sherlock stated straightforwardly. “He’s a clone of you, how could I not love him?”

It was statements like that, delivered with the simplicity of a universal truth, that made John melt. He had no idea what was in store for him on this rather unlikely adventure into space, but he felt incredibly lucky to have Sherlock at his side. Even if he could be a git sometimes, who couldn’t leave well enough alone when it came to tinkering with DNA.

John realized they’d been smiling gooily at each other and self-consciously broke off. “Um, should we go check on them?”

“Hmm?” Sherlock was trailing his fingers down John’s arm.

“The _children_ ,” John emphasized with some amusement.

“Oh right.” Sherlock sprang up, pulling John with him, and the couch vanished almost before John was ready for it. Boldly Sherlock pushed through the door to the playroom, and the children looked up at them in surprise.

John’s smile quickly turned to a look of alarm. “What are you _doing_?” he admonished, striding over to the small table where they sat. “Where did you get this? You can’t eat this!” Lily was halfway through a chocolate candy bar, Finn was stuffing himself with cake and ice cream, and Arthur was eating M &M’s from a bowl with a spoon like it was cereal. Worse than that were the empty candy wrappers scattered on the floor, evidence of the binge he’d interrupted.

John started to collect the dishes. “You said they would be properly looked after—“ he accused Sherlock.

“That’s what they eat!” Sherlock insisted, trying to take back the bowl of M&M’s.

“They can’t possibly,” John refuted. “I don’t care what you’ve _been_ feeding them, this is _not_ good for them—“

“They’re designed to consume primarily glucose, it’s exceedingly common and highly energetic—“

One of them tugged too hard on the bowl and it went flying, raining M&M’s down on the room. Arthur dove beneath the table while Lily and Finn stared at them with wide eyes. John closed his eyes and took a deep breath, reminding himself that this wasn’t—well, the end of the world had already happened, so… He sat down heavily in one of the little chairs and rubbed his face wearily. When he looked up Sherlock had crouched effortlessly beside him and was watching him with concern.

“Sorry,” John said with a thin smile. “It’s been a long day.”

“Yes,” Sherlock agreed. “I should have thought of that.”

John sighed and realized the children were still watching him warily. “I’m sorry,” he told Lily and Finn. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you.” He felt movement by his feet and looked under the table, then coaxed Arthur out and set him on his lap. “Or you, either,” John added, hugging him close. “I just thought you were eating something bad for you, and were going to get sick.”

“I wouldn’t let them eat something bad,” Baker chimed in. “They tried to get carrots and roast beef sandwiches, but I said, not until you’ve had your sweets.”

“Well done,” Sherlock encouraged the computer. “Go on, finish eating,” he told Lily and Finn, as Arthur happily picked candy pieces off the table. “Papa’s just tired and ought to go back to bed,” he went on pointedly.

John made no reply to this—it was probably true, but at the moment going to bed was the last thing he wanted to do. He had an irrational fear that if he fell asleep, he might wake up to a very different universe—one without the children, or Sherlock, in it perhaps. He’d already lost one irreplaceable thing today.

“So you eat candy and cake, hmm?” he asked the children conversationally. “See, when _I_ was your age, I wasn’t allowed to have those very often. They were quite a treat!”

“In books children are always eating carrots and roast beef sandwiches and potatoes,” Lily replied, deftly dissecting her candy bar layer by layer. “We were curious what those were.”

“You might be able to have a _small_ amount,” Sherlock allowed, “for experimental purposes. But only after you’ve eaten your meal!” He narrowed his eyes at Finn’s selection. “I’m not sure ice cream and cake is sufficiently nutritious for you,” he judged. “I recommend you stick with candy.”

“But Daddy, I don’t like eating candy _all_ the time,” Finn complained, voice perilously close to a whine. John had the feeling Sherlock did not deal well with that sort of thing.

“If you have some physiological data you can show me sometime, Sherlock,” he swooped in, “perhaps I can help the children with their food choices.” He definitely wanted some proof of this so-called diet.

The request perked the other man up. “Oh, I have a great deal of data, John!” he promised. “Shall we examine it?” Somehow his tone was suggestive, despite the statements being entirely literal.

“In a little while,” John demurred. “First, I think _I_ out to have something to eat—“

“Oh, of course!” Sherlock jumped to his feet before John could finish. “I’ve been quite remiss in taking care of you, I hope you won’t suffer any ill effects.” He was striding towards the far wall as he spoke. “Baker, I need a meal for John, nutritionally sound, and some tea as well—“

John wanted to see how he was getting the food, as there was nothing resembling a kitchen over there, but he also didn’t want to leave the children. “Papa,” Lily asked soberly, “did the Earth blow up?”

John kept an eye on Arthur, who was crawling around the floor gathering up stray M&M’s. “Yes, I’m afraid it did,” he told her. “But we got away safely, and we saved quite a lot of other people.” He wondered how many, and how they were getting on; he ought to check on them soon.

John wanted to add something about how they were going to a new home now, but he suddenly wasn’t sure exactly what the plan was—if they were all going to be transferred to a planet or what. So instead he added, “And Daddy and I will take care of you, so you mustn’t worry.”

“Of course they’ll _worry_ , John, they’re intelligent creatures, not mere automatons,” Sherlock countered, carrying over a tray that was absolutely heaped with food. It covered most of the table when he set it down before John with satisfaction. “There. Baker was trying to be stingy with the food, but this seems like about what you’d normally eat, doesn’t it?”

John balanced Arthur on one knee and Finn on the other as both boys stared at the tray with fascination. “Actually it’s about _five times_ what I’d normally eat,” John admitted mildly. He supposed that to Sherlock, who ate very little, the ‘normal amount’ seemed unquantifiably large.

“Oh.”

“But I will definitely have some tea,” John went on pleasantly, not wanting to make Sherlock feel bad. “Do the children drink tea?”

“I prefer them to have sugar water,” Sherlock hedged.

“Ah. No, leave that alone,” John told Finn, who was reaching for a bowl of vegetable soup.

“What’s that?” Lily asked, pointing at some strips of bacon. “And that?” A slice orange, which John supposed did look a bit odd.

He went through all the food items for the children, managing to eat some for himself in between explanations and warnings. Sherlock, delightfully, stuck around for the rather domestic scene, perhaps in order to inject his own rules for the children’s diets, since obviously they were coming from different perspectives. He allowed them to have a little jam and some particularly sweet fruit, but seemed very iffy about the vegetables and meat. John was not sure if this caution was really necessary, but he appreciated that Sherlock was erring on that side, as he didn’t normally.

Sherlock did, at least, eat part of a sandwich himself and a couple of cooked carrots—John was going to need physiological data on him as well, he decided, so he would know how much of his reluctance to eat was alien metabolism and how much was Sherlock not being bothered to take care of himself.

“What do we do with the leftovers?” John asked, staring at several meals still sitting on the tray. “And where did you get this food?”

“Here, I’ll show you.” John reluctantly removed the children from his lap—fed and watered, they headed off for the toy shelves—and took the tray of food, which had wobbled precariously in Sherlock’s hands. They went over to the far wall, where a panel seemed to melt away with no signal from Sherlock. “Stasis chamber,” he told John. “You put food in there, and it stays unchanged until you take it out again.”

John slid the tray in and a blue glow suffused it, then the wall panel reappeared. It was slightly underwhelming, actually, but he wasn’t sure what he had expected—he would have to check on the food later to see if anything had happened to it. “And how do you get _new_ food?” he prompted Sherlock.

“You just ask for it,” the other man claimed. “Baker, could I get some chocolate biscuits for John? And what goes with that—coffee, perhaps?” A different wall panel vanished to reveal the requested food, the coffee steaming hot and exactly the way John liked it.

He fed one of the chocolate biscuits to Arthur, who had trotted over to hug his legs. “And where does the food come from?” John persisted. “I mean have you got it in storage somewhere? Will we have to ration it? There’s so many people on board—“ And yet not enough. John set his coffee cup down and picked Arthur up, holding him close.

“No, it’s mainly repurposed matter,” Sherlock dismissed, which didn’t sound especially appetizing. “Near infinite amount really, as we can even manufacture the food from space dust, which is quite abundant in the universe.”

John blinked at him. “I just ate space dust?” And liked it, too.

“It’s all just _atoms_ , John,” Sherlock tried to explain. Arthur squirmed and John let him back down. “Protons and electrons and so forth. Building blocks to be rearranged into whatever we need—clothing, toothpaste, roast beef sandwiches.”

John decided this was one of those things he was just going to have to go with for the moment, but made a mental note to ask for some scientific literature on the subject, if it existed. Knowing Mycroft there was probably a three-inch-thick manual on the food systems alone.

“Okay, so when we need something we just ask the ship for it and it appears,” John summarized. “With no need to worry that we’re depleting stores.” Rather convenient.

“Exactly,” Sherlock agreed. He seemed very matter-of-fact about it, as if inexhaustible resources was simply a perk of his species. “Humans were only beginning to understand the multidimensionality of space, how fluid and interchangeable matter and energy are—pity your physics has been set back, it’s always fun to watch people puzzle it out. Well, not really,” he reversed. “Bit tedious, actually. But sometimes of anthropological interest.”

“Like watching children learn how the world works,” John suggested flatly.

“Yes, precisely—“ Sherlock realized from John’s expression that he was not supposed to have agreed with that. “Er, watching children learn can be fascinating, can’t it?” he tried quickly. “This lot learned to read in a day or so, wish I’d thought to have them hooked up to some kind of brain scanner at the time, you could practically _see_ the neurons firing—“

“Yes, too bad I missed that, as you _didn’t tell me about them_ ,” John shot back pointedly. “I’m still rather cross about all the things you’ve kept from me. Just so you know.”

“Erm, yes.” John could tell Sherlock didn’t know what to do with that statement, as he didn’t understand it in the least. “I acknowledge your anger?”

John rolled his eyes. “Alright, how would _you_ feel if there was something huge going on, and _I_ didn’t tell you about it?”

“Generally I figure things out for myself, if they’re worth bothering about,” Sherlock replied, but hesitantly, because he knew that wasn’t the answer John was looking for. John supposed that meant holiday preparations were ‘not worth bothering about,’ as Sherlock seemed surprised by the appearance of Christmas gifts each year. “But, you know, that’s why you’re so _amazing_ , John, you’re so open and honest and trusting—“

John knew Sherlock meant those as compliments, but in context, they were not so appealing. “For the future,” he said, trying to stay very calm so as to impress Sherlock with the seriousness of this, “I need you to tell me about things. Even if I don’t ask specifically,” he added when Sherlock opened his mouth, “because I don’t know enough to ask.”

“How will I know when that is?” Sherlock asked with a frown.

“Err on the side of telling me,” John advised. “Let’s practice now. What happened to all the people who came onto the ship?”

“They’re in storage,” Sherlock answered immediately.

John blinked and decided he needed to be sitting down again, and that the coffee would be good. “Could you expand on that, please?”

“Well—you remember those vials Hal had?” Sherlock began. “And the biomech?” John nodded tentatively. “Compact storage of living beings, able to be reconstituted completely unchanged. Well, mostly,” he qualified, which didn’t sound good to John. “There’s some debate. But, the vials and biomech are portable formats, on the ship there’s a much more sophisticated system—“

“So all the people are—where?” John interrupted. “In tiny test tubes? Unaware of what’s going on? Suspended animation?”

“It’s more like—well, here.” And then something appeared in the air in front of John, like he was suddenly watching a 3D special effect outlined in gold glitter. Objects rotated and spun and he reached out to touch them, but his hand went right through, feeling nothing.

“What. Is. _That_?”

“Oh, just the ship’s three-dimensional visualization system,” Sherlock tossed off. He pretended like it was no big deal, but John could tell he’d been eager to show this off. “Look what it can do for books!” A page of text appeared at John’s side, like a giant Kindle screen that floated in mid-air, and this time when he reached out it reacted to his touch, highlighting words and turning pages. “We have all the digital publications we could get,” Sherlock continued, “and a lot of paper-based books as well, that still need to be scanned.”

“That’s why you were always sending me to the old bookshop with a list of titles,” John realized. The proprietor had probably thought him quite obsessive, but knew better than to question a steady source of income. “Now what’s this?” He went back to the golden animation.

“I’m explaining about the storage,” Sherlock reminded him, as if John would have forgotten already. “See, objects, including living beings, are mainly empty space—you know, if the nucleus of an atom is a grapefruit on the stage of a concert hall, the electrons are in the very back row. Or whatever,” he dismissed. “Mostly empty space. With a little dimensional manipulation, atoms can be collapsed for storage. Oh, like folding up an umbrella,” Sherlock added brightly. “That’s how Mycroft explained it to Lestrade.”

“Lovely,” John replied, not needing the reminder that _everyone_ had had this explained before him. The animation showed imploding atoms, their electrons hugging the nucleus like a curled-up child. Then a hefty sprinkle of them trickled into one hole on a rectangle, which was covered in similar circles. “And that is…?”

Sherlock glanced at it. “Are you familiar with a 96-well plate? Basically ninety-six tiny test tubes arranged in a solid block—“

“Yes, I’m familiar with it,” John assured him. “We used to run high-throughput assays with them at the clinic, ninety-six samples at once.”

“Exactly,” Sherlock agreed. “Only our ‘plates’ are very thin with even tinier, more numerous wells. One person per well and room for belongings also. Sample tracking, that’s the really tricky part—where Baker’s mind-reading abilities come in handy.”

“It can be rather difficult,” the computer added, “especially with very young children or the mentally ill, who lack a strong sense of personal identity.”

“But you do manage to get them sorted properly?” John checked. “So that when they’re reconstituted, the families are together?”

“Oh, more or less,” Sherlock dismissed, as if this was a minor detail.

“Parents usually recognize their children, if there’s any doubt,” Baker told him, more helpfully. “And we can always do a DNA test, assuming they’re related biologically.”

That made John feel a bit better. “So you’ve got all these plates stacked in a freezer somewhere?” he guessed, thinking of the clinic’s storage system. “Or can you store them at room temperature?”

“Room temperature, of course!” Sherlock promised. “And, they aren’t individual plates—it’s more like a sheet of very thin, flexible nanometallic material which is kept rolled up. Quite like a roll of toilet paper actually.”

John sipped his coffee. “So you’ve saved humanity on toilet paper, then?”

“That was just an _analogy_ , John,” Sherlock emphasized. “The nanometallic material would not be mistaken for toilet paper in either appearance or texture.” Thank goodness for _that_.

John watched the strip rolling and unrolling in the animation. “Right, that’s good. Animals stored the same way?”

“Yes, and anything else we didn’t think we’d need during the voyage,” Sherlock agreed, “like cultural artifacts. Well, we’ll probably pop some out now and then and try to digitize them,” he allowed. John assumed he meant the cultural artifacts, and not the animals. “I’m rather looking forward to studying Q’s biological samples, I hope he’s not going to be _selfish_ with them,” he went on. “I would rather have been collecting those, but Mycroft said since we had the ship we had to collect people.” He obviously felt this was unfair.

“So the entire time I was living at Baker Street, it was actually a mind-reading alien spaceship?” Best to get all these things clarified now, John felt.

Sherlock’s expression suggested the answer was more complex than that. “Well, in a sense,” he tried.

“In what sense?” John asked patiently.

“We only reactivated the ship recently,” Sherlock explained, “when we started preparing for the launch. Until then it was locked into the form of an ordinary London row house.”

“I’ve felt very stiff for ages,” Baker complained. “I much prefer dimensional fluidity.”

“I see,” John said, though he didn’t really, but that didn’t seem so important right now. Clearly he needed to brush up on his physics to live here now. “And what’s the end goal? You said we were looking for a new planet for humans? A new Earth?”

“Or more than one,” Sherlock clarified. “Eggs in multiple baskets, or whatever. Bit tedious, always debates about native organisms, or should we take something totally dead and terraform it—though usually things aren’t ever totally dead, unless you wouldn’t want anyone living there anyway—too hot, too cold, lethal radiation, that sort of thing.” John nodded as though he’d often contemplated that. “The universe is positively _grimy_ with single-celled organisms,” Sherlock went on in annoyance. “Fascinating when one has time to study them, of course, but quite vexing when you’re trying to settle a planet.” Little alien bacteria started swimming around in mid-air, as if the animation was responding to Sherlock’s thoughts.

“You’ve done this before, you said,” John remembered. “Saved species, resettled them.”

“Yes,” Sherlock agreed. “Standard protocol.” He hesitated, then sat down next to John. “I don’t want you to think I always…” John raised an eyebrow, not following. “…pick up someone on each planet.” John’s mind had not even gone there yet, but he smirked a bit at Sherlock’s attitude.

“You haven’t got an alien in every port?” he teased Sherlock, who per usual failed to respond in kind.

“No, not at all,” he insisted earnestly. “Nor have I genetically engineered children with anyone else! My brothers, on the other hand…” he continued with disapproval. “Well, they can figure out their own domestic lives.”

“Quite,” John agreed heartily. He just hoped the ship was big enough for all the drama Holmes egos could generate. “I’m so glad you made the children,” he added, in case there was any way this hadn’t been clear before. “Do they—I mean, once you get humanity settled, it’s on to the next job, is it?”

“Yes,” Sherlock assured him. “Oh, but you and the children must stay here,” he added quickly. “Er, please?”

He seemed a bit worried and John rushed to agree with him, appreciating the sentiment. Sherlock definitely had some catching up to do when it came to considering John’s feelings, but at least he was trying. “Of course we’ll stay with you,” John promised. “I hadn’t even considered anything else, you would’ve had a hard time getting rid of me if you wanted to!”

Sherlock squeezed his hand. “Good,” he said with unusual sincerity. “Because settling humanity isn’t going to be easy. There’s all kinds of dangers in space and on unexplored planets. And, it will probably take a while, too, by your standards of time—decades, maybe.”

John’s eyes widened, just when he thought he’d finally lost the capacity to be surprised today. “Decades? Just how old _are_ you?”

Sherlock seemed slightly affronted by this question. “Well I’m not sure that’s really relevant, John,” he claimed. “My species ages differently from humans. Anyway, I think with a bit of creativity we can find a way to slow your aging process down…” His eyes gleamed like he was already in the lab, splicing John’s genes. Which made John just a little nervous.

“Hang on, let’s get _authorization_ first this time,” John insisted, “so you can have proper tools. And perhaps some oversight,” he couldn’t help adding, which made Sherlock roll his eyes.

“Honestly, John, there’s an entire universe out there you know nothing about!” Sherlock warned. “You’re just going to have to trust me sometimes!”

John laughed at that, which may not have been the response Sherlock was looking for, but considering the last couple of days John had thought he might never laugh again. Trust Sherlock? Of course he would. To the ends of the universe.

“I think perhaps you should get some sleep,” Sherlock suggested carefully, perhaps fearing that John’s laughter had gone on a bit too long.

“Oh, can’t we play with the children for a bit?” John asked instead. With the food and caffeine he could go a little longer, and the children looked up hopefully from a board game they were trying to set up.

“Yes, won’t you come play with us?” Lily asked, her gaze taking in both John and Sherlock.

“Lily cheats!” Finn accused.

“I do not!” she shot back. “I’m just _better_ than you—Arthur!” The littlest boy had grabbed all the game pieces from the board to play with them, messing up whatever pattern they’d established.

John glanced at Sherlock. “Sounds like they need adult supervision,” he suggested, standing.

“Well, good thing you’re here, John,” Sherlock responded, popping up as well. “Being a single parent was very difficult!”

John did not have much sympathy here, as he would gladly have helped with the children had he known of their existence. “At least you didn’t have to deal with the damp, sticky stages,” he pointed out, settling down on the floor beside the children. Sherlock gracefully dropped to the other side of the board, and John could definitely see the resemblance between him and Lily now. “Okay! Someone needs to explain the rules to me…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end! Thanks for reading!


End file.
